Laughter As Labrador Talks Back to Owner About Her Bath Using Sound Buttons

An intelligent Labrador Retriever has left the internet in hysterics by showing off her communication skills in a viral video.

The TikTok post, which can be seen here, shows Copper the Labrador stoically communicating her sentiments on bath time to her owner using a button board.

The video, posted by @TheChattyLab, has appealed to growing intrigue and research into how dogs are able to use communication buttons to converse with their families.

"I started training and teaching Copper with the buttons when she was just four months old," Copper's owner Tia told Newsweek.

"I feel like we learned how to use the board together. I saw that a woman named Christina Hunger, a speech and language pathologist, had taught her dog Stella how to talk with buttons and I was amazed," Tia added.

Tia shared with Newsweek that she is also a speech and language pathologist, and that she had felt inspired to see how people in her industry like Christina Hunger were training their dogs.

Tia told Newsweek: "I have always known that dogs are smart and can learn words. I was interested to see if my puppy could learn how to communicate in a new way. When Copper was a young pup, I made her a board out of plywood that I got at Home Depot and some buttons that I found on Amazon. Since then, her board has grown immensely."

Copper the Labrador is just the latest in a long line of internet-famous pups who've proven their sound button skills in trending videos, with Bunny the Sheepadoodle arguably taking the crown for being the most famous of them all.

Bunny had been impressively deemed 'TikTok's talking dog' after proving herself capable of communicating about her walk- and treat-filled days through her button board.

Like Bunny, Copper is seen to be able to communicate with her owner through buttons about her wants and needs. In the viral video, which has amassed 29,000 views since being posted last week, she can be seen dictating to her owner that she wants a bath by simply pressing a button that indicates "bath time" when asked if she fancies a soak.

"SHE GOT HER BATH," one stunned user commented underneath the post.

What's The Science Behind The 'Talking Dog' Mats?

While most pet owners are used to pestering their fur-children in various modes of baby-speak about "walkies" or "din dins," they rarely expect a response back beside the odd tilted head or bark.

That is, until button boards came onto the scene to bridge the language barrier between mankind and its dogs. According to PetMD, button boards are based on alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) devices that can assist non-verbal people in communicating.

Does Stephen Hawking's communication system ring any bells here? If the answer is yes, then that is because these button devices targeted at dogs have been developed from the very same principles that assisted Hawking and other people who were unable to communicate with the world around them.

Typically, the button boards for dogs have circular buttons with words and icons displayed on them, each button will let out a pre-recorded word when pressed.

By this logic, if your pup wants to pop to the loo all your dog would have to do would be to press the "walk" or "outside" button with their nose or paw.

However, training your pet to pick up this pseudo-language is no easy feat and it comes as little surprise that the pups that have succeeded in this endeavor have enjoyed a degree of online fame.

"We use the FluentPet hextiles and buttons," said Tia.

"Now, Copper is able to tell me when she needs to go the bathroom, when she is hungry, when she wants to play, when she wants a bath, and when she wants to go in the pool," she added.

Update 01/17/23, 03.10 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include comment from the original poster.

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