True or False?

Dogs can learn to use talking buttons to genuinely communicate with their owners.

(scroll to the bottom to find the answer!)

Taylor Swift has always been famously devoted to her three cats. So when rumors started swirling that she and Travis Kelce had quietly added a dog to the family, the internet had a lot of feelings about it. Turns out the rumors were true.

The story came together in pieces. First, Travis's brother Jason casually mentioned on a podcast that Travis had just gotten a puppy, right around the same time a brand new green velvet couch was destroyed. Then, wedding guests spotted a framed photo at their Madison Square Garden ceremony showing the couple cuddled up with a fluffy white dog. A week after the wedding, the pup was photographed walking down the stairs of Swift's private jet in Palm Beach, ears flopping in the Florida breeze.

The dog appears to be a Samoyed, a fluffy, affectionate breed known for their gentle temperament and strong bond with their families. They are also known for having a lot of energy, being very social, and, famously, eating couches. Kelce and Swift have reportedly had the pup for close to a year, keeping things quietly to themselves for a while. Whether Swift ends up writing a song about the dog remains to be seen. We’ll be on the lookout!

Meet Bear, an almost 8-month-old Havanese who arrived in Daily Dig reader Marisa's life at exactly the right moment. After losing her previous dog two years ago, Marisa says Bear has brought a whole lot of joy back into her home, and one look at this little guy makes that completely easy to believe.

Bear is a social butterfly who wants everyone he meets to say hi or play with him. Marisa especially loves his little white eyebrows and the whitish-grey socks on his paws. He is the kind of puppy who makes you feel like the world is a genuinely good place just by being in it.

Thank you to Daily Dig reader Marisa for sharing Bear with us. Want to see your dog featured next? Reply to this email with their photo and a little about them for a chance to be our next Dog of the Day!

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If you have ever seen a video of a dog pressing a button that says "outside" or "play" and wondered whether that is real communication or a very impressive trick, you’re not alone. Talking buttons for dogs have taken over social media, and scientists are actually taking them seriously.

The concept was originally developed by Christina Hunger, a speech-language pathologist who used augmentative communication devices with her dog Stella and eventually taught her more than 50 words. Dogs like Bunny the Sheepadoodle followed, racking up millions of followers and sparking a real citizen science study at UC San Diego to find out whether button-trained dogs are genuinely communicating or simply responding to patterns and rewards. A recent study found that dogs responded correctly to button words across a variety of situations, suggesting something more meaningful than pure conditioning is at play.

The honest answer is that researchers are still working it out. What we do know is that dogs are incredibly attuned to human communication and can absolutely learn to associate specific actions with specific outcomes. Whether that counts as talking is a fun question to sit with. What is less debatable is that the training process itself is enriching, builds focus, and deepens the bond between you and your dog. Even if your pup never says anything profound, the time you spend teaching them is never wasted.

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🤔 True or False: Kind of! Dogs can absolutely learn to associate buttons with specific words and outcomes, and a UC San Diego study found that button-trained dogs responded correctly to words in a variety of situations. Whether that counts as true communication is still being studied, but the science is more interesting than most people expect.

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