Looking for some advice on what would be a good basic starting button package as a gift for my sister, who recently adopted a mixed breed dog, about 70 pounds. The dog is a young adult, very affectionate, not well trained. TIA

I bought buttons a couple weeks ago for my 5month old bernedoodle puppy. She is not taking any interest in them. She’s not paying attention to the actual button when I press it or have her press it and I’m worried she’s not gonna learn. She has “hungry” “outside” and “ball”. Should I try different words or will that mess her learning up? I was thinking “pets” and “play”. Or is it better to start with just one button? If I start with just one button I don’t want her to think all buttons mean that one word. She knows the words “hungry” and “outside” already but not “play” or “pets”. Should I start by teaching her the words vocally until I can see she understands them and THEN introduce buttons or just start with buttons for words she doesn’t know yet?

Hi All,

I don't know how many Europeans are there in this group, but it's worth a shot. As you may know now, the European warehouse closed down, so shipping got really expensive, since they ship straight from the US now.

There are only a handful of small businesses who retail FluentPet products in the EU, so let me please recommend myself too. The site is in Hungarian for now, but the products are original FP, and I ship everywhere in the EU. It's not yet a feature in my webshop because I don't know how much demand there is, so contact me directly, and we'll sort it out.

https://www.ebabeszed.hu/

I am planning to teach my boys their body parts so they can tell me when something is wrong. I want to teach all of them, but that's not realistic. I was thinking of doing head, back, belly, leg, and tail, with "belly" meaning their entire underside. That would cover all areas generally without getting too specific and give the vet somewhere to start.

For those of you who have taught your pet body parts, which ones did you teach? How effective was it? Do you wish you had done anything different?

I have a cat who’s 8 years old that has been using the buttons for ~2 years. I have the Fluent Pet buttons. I recently found a kitten and adopted her, and have been trying to teach her as well, but she’s not really getting it. I’m not sure if she’s too young, or if maybe she just needs more time to learn. She’s about 3 months old now - when I found her she was only 6 weeks. Has anyone started teaching a cat this young?

Hi! I started my puppy on button training and she’s just not getting that she needs to press the button and not the foam pad. We’re using FluentPet buttons. I have 3 right now, “outside”, “hungry”, and “ball”. I just added “ball” today because I think she needs something more motivating than “outside” and food/“hungry”. I can tell she’s more motivated but she’s still not pressing it independently and when she follows my prompt to paw at the button she always misses the button unless she accidentally steps on it. I am reinforcing accidental button presses so that she can learn what the button means. I’m also an RBT and I’m using some ABA strategies to help train her and it’s been working until I started button training and it seems like she’s not learning. I guess I need tips and/or encouragement

Taught my dog three buttons (treat,play,go outside) within an hour and she is using them well and often.

And I came across suggestion on introducing “all done”. But then i realise the need for her to press that is nonsense. Why would she need to tell us all done. It is more like a button for us to tell her to stop expecting more. As we can just speak it out. I don’t see the need to introduce “all done”. Am I right? What are other pawrents experience in this button? Any real use cases for this button? What are the most useful word you have taught your pet so far?

Hello !

It's been about six months, maybe longer, since I installed sound buttons to communicate with my cat.I use two in particular: one is for treats, and the other is for "eating", to give him his regular meals.

I’ve tried to teach him to press the buttons. He understands that if he scratches the "treat" button, he can get a treat, but he doesn't understand that he has to press it. And he understands that if I press the "eating" button, it means he will get food. So, he’s made the connection a bit, but so far, he really doesn’t understand that he has to press the button to get what he wants.Would you have some advice ?

Thanks

PS : here are the buttons I bought https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0CGX7TYH2?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

My cat is very communicative with body language and I can decipher her main interests most of the time. She is very smart and I thought she would like the buttons as a way of eventually having more specificity to what she can request (what type of toy she wants to play with, what type of treat she wants, what kind of pets etc). I am using the fluent pet system and I introduced 3 buttons a few weeks ago (treat, scratches, play). I think she already knows these words, she definitely knows treat as she will run to the cabinet where they are when I say treat.

I’ve been modeling each button, but have noticed she gets very frustrated during each training session. I think part of it has to do with that I do play a little dumb if she is asking for things with body language/focalization’s and I know what she wants. I will press the button then do it. This is only really happening with the treat button. I usually put some treats in my pocket before sitting down with her to work on the buttons and as soon as she gets one treat she knows I have more and that I’m not immediately giving them to her. She will headbutt, meow, and flop all asking for them but refuses to push the button. She hasn’t push any button intentionally once, although she has on accident a couple times. Sometimes she paws at the treat button but more to try to knock it over (she has a few puzzle feeders that have pieces she has to knock over to get food).

After a while of essentially begging for treats, even while I am pressing the button and supplying them, she starts to get agitated. It looks like she can’t figure out how to make me give them to her, or maybe it seems random to her. Her tail starts to flick and she will pace and even nip at my fingers, which she has never done before. I usually either stop attempting to model buttons (I never put them away though) at this point or just focus more on the other two, but she usually wants neither at this point. I do model all the buttons interchangeably when we work on it. How can I teach her to press the buttons? Or am I going wrong somewhere else? Or just impatient? I just don’t want to make her life worse and if it’s stressing her out that’s not good. I think once she figures that out it will be off to the races, but until then she is just super frustrated.

TLDR: My cat thinks I’m withholding treats and hasn’t paired her pressing the button with getting a treat.

FYI.. I just received this notice in the FluentPet Circle App! FluentPet Early Bird Black Friday Deals Are Here! Deal 1: 25% Off Storewide on Selected Products! 🔑 Use Code: BFCM24📦 Deal 2: 20% Off FluentPet Connect Line + HexTiles! 🔑 Use Code: BFCMCONNECT ⏰ Hurry! Deals end Friday, 11/29!

#fluentpet

Looking for ideas! Which words did you choose after the initial 1-2 buttons you started with?

Hi! I have a very intelligent kitty. Orange, about 2.5 years. Gifted by the cat distribution system and I can’t decide if he’s Maine coon, a forest cat, or a ragdoll mix. A cat mut. He has quite a few buttons and I believe is adept at using them. He spent the day outside over the weekend and came home, spamming “litterbox”. I obliged but his box was clean. Continues to spam it all night and I wake up today to a few spots he’s thrown up overnight. Nothing serious, but enough to make me question if he’s equating litterbox with some sort of stomach pain/sensation? My husband tells me I am nuts, but it’s not lost on me!

Hey all! Our 16-month old gib[1] Winston has figured out reasonably quickly how to press buttons. So far we have "Play", "Pettance" (getting petted in his cat tree bowl), and "Kibbles" (checking if there are kibbles in the kibble dispenser). He is quite good at pressing them by now. We keep him out of the room with the buttons at night, which he seems to be OK with.

He's also pretty vocal, especially when it's getting close to his dinner time - where "close" can be up to two hours earlier! During that time, he also uses his buttons a lot, but seems to just want his dinner. He will press "Pettance" but show no sign of getting into his petting bowl. He will press "Play", and sometimes play but sometimes just ignore the playing. And he will spam the buttons if we don't react. Sometimes he will press a button and then when we get up, he'll go to his food bowl. This is driving us up the wall! We're afraid to add a "Food" button, fearing he will just ask for food earlier and earlier and more often.

Any advice on how to handle pre-dinner-time button spamming?

Edit: He gets fed wet food three times a day: 8:00, 15:00, and 21:00. He also has dry food available with a bit of effort.

Thanks,

-Lars

ObPicture:

https://preview.redd.it/c0r6i49oqi1e1.jpg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b188cf0db557cfa829fb291971ff178800fb5212

[1] Turns out the word for a castrated tomcat is 'gib'. So Gibbs is just three castrated tomcats in a trenchcoat:)

I love the idea of the FluentPet Connect buttons because it means I could more easily log my dog's usage and also not miss anything if I'm in another room or not at home. But, I somehow missed that the Connect system only works out of one base speaker, meaning I can't take the buttons with us anywhere without the base/speaker, if the expensive base/speaker breaks nothing would work until it was replaced, and the audio also has a different source than the buttons which I've read has confused some dogs.

Is there any other app-oriented button on the market?

Set up buttons about 3 weeks ago for my floof. Haven’t had much time to train her so I’ve been doing it passively. A few minutes a day usually.

I made the decision to train her most on the treat button first since she was initially afraid of the buttons and I knew she’d need additional motivation to want to touch them.

Today it finally clicked that pressing the treat button will land her a treat. Fortunately she’s not super food motivated so she hasn’t abused this new power yet.

She also pressed the “want” button. First time she looked confused and ran away from it and so I pressed “want toy” and pulled out her fav toy which she got excited for. Later that day after pressing treat a few times she pressed want again but this time tilted her head and pressed it again immediately after and then looked at me. I started running through the list of things she might want (food, walk, toy, treat), I don’t think she actually knew what she wanted but she did wag her tail at walk and food.

edit: dog tax

(my dog is a 8.5 year old 9lb floof)

https://imgur.com/a/hI2MERv

update/next day: pressed the walk button

https://imgur.com/a/No0xI3Y

I’m trying to train a new cat on buttons but so far he hasn’t been willing to touch things under his feet. Would this be a case to advocate for wall mounted buttons? Has anyone had any luck with those?

Grouping buttons by category seems to make sense?

• To keep them organised or
• to help remember where a particular button is or
• to find a button quicker.
• Maybe even to help build conceptual understanding both ways?

But what are the word categories? How do you group your buttons?

Is there a recommended decible level or range?

My dogs ears are closer to the buttons than mine are.

I don't want to damage his hearing.

Hey everyone! It's been a bit over a month since I started training my 2 cats to use buttons, and I wanted to share how it’s been going so far. So here are some details.

My cats' progress so far:

When I first introduced the buttons, one of my cats Zoom was the one who took to them the quickest. She understood the concept within the 1st week, started smelling/lightly tapping the buttons. But she still hasn't fully learned how to activate them regularly. Sometimes she would sit next to a button instead of touching it. But she’s often the one to show interest in the soundboard. For the times when I'm around, so far she’s activated "eat" 1 or 2 times and the rest is either a tap or sitting next to it. And she accidentally pressed the "play" and "brush" buttons a few times (not sure if it’s really an accident at this point). It seems like she might not know how to activate them with her front paw?

My other cat Oreo, on the other hand, has been more of an observer. The only time she’s pushed the buttons so far was when she was playing & jumped on the soundboard and accidentally pressed "play". However, I can tell that she’s beginning to understand the concept. She now knows that when I press the "eat" button, it’s time for food or a snack, and she’ll get up and start moving.

Details about buttons + DIY soundboard:

I now have 4 buttons. I started with "eat" on 9/25 then added "play" on 27/9, "brush" on 10/4 , "pet me" on 10/15. I thought it would be useful to include "brush" and "pet me" since Zoom sometimes wants me to pick her up instead of just brushing. Tbh I’m not entirely sure she understands the difference between those 2. I think I might even switch to another word if I need to. It’s still a work in progress, but we’re getting there!

When I first started, I just placed the 1st button on the floor in my cats' main area. As I added more, I moved them onto a fabric mat. A few weeks later, I created a DIY soundboard using cardboard. This was a game-changer because it makes it easier for the cats to press the buttons. Before, the buttons were slightly higher off the ground, which made it harder for them to apply enough pressure to activate them. With the board, they can now stand on top of it and press more easily. I've also learned from here that it's important to place the board a bit far from the wall that way they can move around it.

Helpful tips (Not an expert's advice but based on my personal experience):

Show interest in the buttons so your pet(s) becomes interested in them too. Think of it as sth you need to get done but your nosy pet has to check it too. That's the goal here.

The 1st day I just observed how my cats reacted to their 1st button. Apart from smelling it because it was sth new, understandably they weren't interested at all. So I started modeling (pushing it for them) + training every single day during the first 2 weeks to make it clear that this is now an important part of their daily routine. And when I do these things I mostly sit next to the board taking my time making sure they're both looking at what I'm doing. I think this helped them realize that the buttons are "interesting" / lead to sth if they use them too.

Another thing you can do is using the buttons for yourself in front of your pet. Ex: If I'm about to have dinner I activate "eat" then start my meal. I make sure my cats are around, looking at me walking to/from the board to the table. I like this because it's not direct training that can get overwhelming too quickly.

Challenges I'm facing:

The biggest challenge I’ve encountered so far has been with Oreo. I believe she thinks she doesn’t need to lift her paw to get what she wants lol. I’ve been practicing paw targeting with her (which is the same way my other cat learned). I learned about it from YouTube channel: "Justin Bieber The Cat". It’s been so helpful, I've used since the 2nd week. I admit that I’m not as consistent with the training as I’d like to be. Right now, I’m practicing with Oreo about once or twice a week, and she also watches me & Zoom occasionally practicing. I think I’d see faster progress if I did it daily. I don’t want them to get overwhelmed with the process either.

Any advice is appreciated on how to proceed from here. I’m not sure whether I should focus on refining their use of the current buttons or if I should start adding new words.

I’d definitely encourage anyone thinking about trying pet speech buttons to go for it—just be sure you have the time and patience for consistent training. This process makes you re-explore your cat/dog. Whether they use 1 word or more, I think it’s incredibly amazing to see them "talk" to us with these buttons.

Thanks for reading🐾 I'll also be sharing key moments on my cats' youtube channel for anyone interested in following our journey with buttons.

TLDR; One of my 2 cats is making slow but steady progress. While the other is still observing.

Has anyone else found their dog is hesitant to touch buttons with their paws? Mine lays down and hits the button with the underside of his front foreleg.

Do you take yours up? Put them somewhere safe?

I have ours on a wooden cutting board but it roatates sometimes making it more confusing.

I know some pets will use a seemingly random combination of words to express something they want that they might not have the buttons for yet.

Like my cat for example would press "cat nip" a lot usually in conjunction with "play". It took me a minute to realize she didn't want loose catnip to roll in and play, she wanted her cat nip filled toys to play with.

Her newest combo is "cuddle, play" and we can't figure that one out as she doesn't like to play wrestle.

I know that Fluent Pet has a word combo glossary but I wanted to get some opinions/hear what combos you had to figure out.

Cat tax obviously

I’m trying to find a video I saw a few months back with a cat pretty advanced in using their buttons. It utilized a combination of something like “Inside” + “Rain” + “Bathroom” ON CAMERA and you can see the owner walk to the bathroom trying to figure out what they meant, and it turns out water was leaking from the ceiling?

I tried using various search terms to track the video down, but no luck. I hoped that it might ring a bell for one of you since I assume lots of folks that have been at this longer might recognize the scenario.

Today is the day my 7mo kitten intentionally used her first button!! So I’m trying to show my sister examples of how remarkably smart cats use buttons in unexpected but accurate ways.

Edit: thanks u/robind21283, they provided a link to it! https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8857D7u/

I would like to record Bruni pushing her buttons. My goal is to make a YT channel akin to BilliSpeaks. For that, I would like to buy some kind of camera system - something that is easy to use and that will reliably record when she enters the frame, will record sound, and will work in dim light. Do you have any recommendations?