The Morning Midway: When Animals Learn to Talk Back – How Science May One Day Defeat PETA’s Grip Against Prancing Poodles and Pole-Vaulting Pigs

The Cristianis, c. 1940s

Times move on and change, people’s attitudes, too.  We learn more about life and adjust forward — or backward. Sometimes, yesterday turns out to be better than we thought it was, then or since.

Now, people around the world are talking to their animals, as they always have, but the animals are starting to talk back.  Thanks for, among a growing number of communication gadgets, buttons placed on a pad.  Buttons there for a paw to push. Buttons that say things like “Go out” “Hungry” Even, yes, “I love you.”

Merle Evans leading the band, as dogs enter for their cue

“Tired of talking with people in your family? Try the dog,” writes Cordilia James in The Wall Street Journal.  A fascinating report of this emerging phenomena.  The button titles can be tailor made.  One Alex Devine of Tacoma, Wash, went public on TikTok, telling about her dog Bunny putting paw to the point.  Her favorite button poke from Bunny.   “Love you, Mom.”  She now has 2.7 million followers.  And, yes, I know of the many wonderful animal trainers out there who know so much more about communicating with animals and have had to endure relentless attacks on their good work.                     

A speech pathologist, Christina Hunger, talking up the validity of this.   She’s been adapting some of her methods used with patients to give animals more options in communicating, and testing them on her dog, Stella.

They May be Monitoring Your Conduct

Kendra Baker’s possessive cat. Billi pushes “mad” when she feels affection-deprived. Once, when she witnessed her matron kissing a boyfriend, she hightailed it to the button mat and pressed “Later!  Mad!  Pets!” 

Not just dogs and cats.  Across the barnyard, other critters are beginning to wake up and mouth off.  Karlijn in the Netherlands has her dog Silke talking, and is now bestowing the same skills on her guinea pigs.

Oh gosh, and I don’t even own a pet.  I am so so behind. But I would love to own my own button mat, a discrete option to offer shy guests. Heck, perhaps one day they will be sold to estranged spouses.

A show stopper at Big Apple Circus, 2004.
photo by Bertrand Guay

Should we be at all surprised? After all, if you have ever spoken to a circus trainer, chances are they likened the early stages of teaching to the same thing a parent goes through with a toddler.  I have it on good authority: Russia cat trainer Svetlana Shamsheeva, above, quoted in my book Fall of the Big Top. That dog in your care who keeps you in the dark may have been deprived of a proper dogyhood.

When Home Pets Seem Less Unlike Circus Stars

They may be able to ban the animal from the circus – for a time – but they can’t ban the circus from the animal. To degrees universal, it still flourishes around the world.  This bodes well for a future return of animal acts under whatever then might be left of our bartered big tops.  If the public can be offered transparent evidence of animals being trained in decently respectful manners, that combined with their own expanding knowledge of human to animal communication in the home may give them pause to reconsider.  Pause to appreciate what marvelous things animals can be taught to do.

Baby Opal, trained by Peggy and Mac McDonald, Polack Bros. Circus, 1955

Of course, there is still a large public out there waiting to be entertained at least by dogs and the cats, as witness the latter lighting up the stages of America’s Got Talent. Those judges are clearly on the side of real circus. 

So, how did that make you feel?  Okay, then go ask your dog what he thinks.  And hope he does not push the “bored, do not disturb” button.