Christina Hunger has taught her dog Stella how to communicate.
Stella may just be a dog, but she knows how to communicate. Her owner, Christina Hunger, is a speech pathologist who is teaching her how to 'talk' with the help of a customised keyboard. The keyboard consists of 29 buttons for 29 words like "come", "play", "look" and "park". Whenever Stella wants to express herself, she pushes the corresponding button with her paw, sometimes even combining four or five words together to form a sentence.
Stella, who lives in San Diego with Ms Hunger, has become something of an Internet celebrity for her amazing communication skills. Her videos, posted to Instagram where she has 4.7 lakh followers, often garner thousands of views.
In one of the videos, Stella can be seen desperately pushing the "look" button, asking her owners to investigate a sound she heard outside.
In another, she pushes "Now now now now Stella Stella look," to command her owner's attention.
"Like any great communicator, Stella is making sure she has our attention while she talks," explains Ms Hunger on her blog. "She frequently says 'look', waits for us to turn toward her then says her message."
The videos have gone viral online, leaving thousands impressed. "I love Stella the talking dog!!" wrote one commenter. "This is so cool" said another.
According to Inside Edition, Ms Hunger taught Stella how to 'speak' by putting different buttons around the house. "I just figured she needed another way to say the words she already knows," she said.
As for Stella's favourite word, it is "outside". "She definitely says 'outside' the most. She absolutely loves being outside," Ms Hunger said in an interview with CNN.
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