Bunny the "Talking Dog" Uses Buttons to "Talk" to Her Owner—and Rachael Is Speechless

Alexis from Tacoma, Washington, might look like your average, run-of-the-mill dog owner, but she's really a lot cooler than that. She's been using an "augmentative and alternative" system to communicate with her sheepadoodle—now the Internet-famous Bunny the Talking Dog. (Bunny has over 7 million TikTok followers!)

Once Alexis spent the time really figuring out how Bunny communicates on her own, she discovered a button system that Bunny could step on to say different words like "home," "I love you" and "outside."

"Dogs are communicating with us all the time," Alexis says." They communicate beautifully. So part of our journey was me really taking the time to understand how she was communicating intrinsically. And I thought that adding the buttons could be a way for us to communicate about things that I wouldn't be able to understand just by watching her body language or just hanging out with her on a day-to-day basis and getting to know her in that way."

The buttons are organized according to the Fitzgerald key, which is a system of organizing words in declarative sentence order that was developed in 1929 to teach grammatical language to children who were deaf and hard of hearing. With the buttons organized according to the key, Bunny can compartmentalize where the buttons are—and the result is 101 buttons on the board that she can use to communicate with Alexis.

Rachael Ray Show

Alexis loved the button system so much that she became co-owner of the company, FluentPet. She says all dogs—regardless of age, size or breed—can have success with the system. She suggests that anyone interested in the system try to listen to what their pet is saying before getting the buttons—and then opening up their world.

And yes, you can use it with cats, too!