#it's just what christina hunger and her advocates specifically peddle that is imo a uniquely human behavior and human failure

[darkwood-sleddog]

You are taking my post wildly out of context and I understand that this happens frequently as tumblr posts are handed around blog to blog so biggy. But let me explain: What my post is referencing are people like Christina Hunger and the owner of Bunny the Dog who ascribe large swaths of emotional meaning to the buttons their dogs choose to press. This is known as the Clever Hans Effect. This is VERY different than teaching a dog a single button or set of bells, etc. to go potty or to be fed. There is nothing wrong with teaching such things as you already understand what your dog is asking for, but are aiding in a disability to better care for your pet. This is very different than what Christina Hunger and other dog button advocates that consistently ascribe emotional and philosophical reasons their dogs may push buttons do. At the time of my post, Dogblr and many of the blogs I follow were going through Christina Hunger's book in detail and comparing it to actual dog behavior science because at her fundamental core, Christina misinterprets actual dog behavior in favor of her Clever Hans Effect, human spoken word, and emotion base preferences. Christina shows a huge preference for human spoken English in her mentality and, to quote my original post above, believes using buttons allows her and her dog to "speak the same language for the first time" but this is untrue. The dog is still speaking dog and Christina is misinterpreting what the dog does because she has very little if no foundations in actual dog behavior science, much like for example, the owner of Koko the Gorilla. This is VERY different than using buttons as an aid. Christina Hunger also consistently compares dogs to non-verbal children and even though she is a speech therapist, comes at her dog button project in many ways that are ableist to non verbal people. This is what my post is referencing and discussing. Not that all dog buttons are bad, but that thinking the dog is speaking human language rather than performing a learned behavior is. That thinking your dog can only best communicate with you through something that is fundamentally unnatural to them is better than humans learning what dogs mean with their own language. The failure is Clever Hans Effect and this unwillingness to learn what dogs are actually saying. Saying that I'm calling people "stupid or failures" is a direct misinterpretation of the post at hand. It is not a failure to already understand what the dog is saying and use an aid to help YOU. It IS a failure to willfully misinterpret dog behavior in favor of one's own ableist idea that dogs need to speak and be taught human spoken english to be best understood. This ridiculous idea that human spoken word is the most important thing in both human and dog communication is something I would think somebody that cares about hearing disabilities would understand.

If dog buttons have one hater I am that very hater.

Communicating “in the same language for the first time” through dog buttons as Christina Hunger describes in her book is a failure of the most human proportion, putting too much value on the human (English) spoken word and ignoring that every detail, movement, twitch of our dogs is an act of communication itself. They are already communicating with us, just as human and primitive dog first did thousands of years ago. Just how we have shaped each other’s evolution by our very relationship. The dog understands you without buttons. If you can’t understand a dog without buttons, or “speak the same language” without human spoken language that is your HUMAN failure.