This viral Des Moines dog can "speak" using more than 100 buttons
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Beaverdale's Puppy Parker Posey has been described by the New York Times as a "genius" dog, thanks to her ability to "speak" by using more than 100 buttons that verbalize everything from "outside" to "ouch."
Why it matters: Owner Sascha Crasnow says that while dogs have evolved to live alongside humans, people haven't yet learned to meet them halfway. The buttons, popularized on TikTok, are changing that, she says.
How it started: In January 2021, at the height of the pandemic, Crasnow was finishing her doctoral degree in Michigan when her nearly 17-year-old dog died.
- Isolated and grieving, she adopted beagle mix Parker from an animal rescue in Kalamazoo, after the dog had been found in a cardboard box in Kentucky. She named her after the actress Parker Posey.
- Crasnow's stepdad sent her a TikTok of Bunny, a dog who communicated by pressing buttons. Then she read "How Stella Learned to Talk," a book by a speech-language pathologist who used recordable buttons to help her dog communicate.
The book reframed how she understood Parker, Crasnow tells Axios. Parker had been ringing a bell on the door constantly, and Crasnow assumed she always wanted to go outside. She realized Parker was trying to communicate different things, but only had one tool to do it.
How it works: Crasnow started with six buttons: food, water, play, outside, all done, and toy.
- Parker had already heard those words spoken aloud by Crasnow, giving her a head start on the sounds, she says. Within hours of setup, she pressed each one, an atypically quick response that could take some dogs weeks, she says.
Now, Crasnow works as an art professor at Drake, and Parker's vocabulary — as well as her social media following — has exponentially grown.
- She uses more than 100 buttons representing emotions, wants, social words, places and descriptions.
- Crasnow says Parker also combines multiple words to express herself. For example: When Crasnow ignored her timer after washing her sweaters, she says Parker pressed the buttons "water" and "sweater."
- After Parker finished barn hunt training — where dogs search for rats — she pressed the buttons "where" and "animal."
Yes, but: Not everyone is convinced. Some scientists are skeptical that button-pressing reflects genuine language comprehension rather than learned behavior patterns.
The bottom line: Through the buttons, however, Crasnow says she feels she has more of a partnership with Parker.
- After caring for her first dog through hospice, she says she deeply wanted an understanding of her dog's desires.
- "We're kind of as close to being equals as I think is possible for a captive animal and a human."