Our AIC Story
I was skeptical too.
I was intrigued when I first saw the buttons, but I was immediately flooded with all my psychology training (I used to be a counselor). This was surely confirmation bias, the human tendency to cherry-pick information confirming our beliefs or ideas.
But I kept watching. And watching. And watching. I couldn't deny that numerous dogs and cats used the buttons in contextually appropriate ways. I knew that from a scientific perspective, the potential was mind-blowing. This isn’t something that’s been demonstrated to this depth before. I was curious. And I was skeptical. I had to try it for myself.
I also knew that this might be the thing to convince my husband to sign off on another dog. He would be intrigued too. After a few months of showing him videos I brought up the idea of getting an Australian Shepherd or a Border Collie. It worked. He was in.
Enter Ripley.
We had no idea what we were in for, but we immediately fell deeply and madly in love with all his sass and poof.
On 06/02/22, we introduced Ripley to his first buttons. It was just a few days after bringing him home and he was only 8 weeks old. As soon as I put the board down, he pressed them right away with a ton of excitement and enthusiasm. He had so much confidence and curiosity. We were pumped.
Within the first 6 weeks, I think he was up to 10 buttons. I honestly was so overwhelmed with having a puppy that we stopped keeping track. At some point along the way, my skepticism (while still there) turned to a full believer.
He was making connections.
Watch this video for more about or AIC Story.
When we transitioned his board from the floor to the wall, things really exploded for him. He went from 20 or so words to 40+ in the span of a few weeks. It was shortly after moving it to the wall that things really hit home for me. We spent 6 months slowly introducing our older rescue dogs Stanley & Cooper to Rip and finally had been successful. The next morning we let them interact and then separated them to give everyone a break. Ripley went to his board and pressed something like WHERE STANLEY COOPER. He had 40-something words to choose from and he chose those. That week he did this repeatedly, even saying BROTHERS LOVE YOU. You could see it in his other body language. There was just so much intention there.
Gary was a bit more skeptical. He says the ‘car food smell’ incident made it all real for him. Rip had put novel words together before, but that connection was just next level. He smelled our ice cream, connected it to a pup cup in the car, and pressed car food smell. We don’t know how else to explain it.
There was also the time that we were watching TV, and there was a gunshot scene. Ripley immediately went to his board and pressed SOUND. In addition to expressing his needs, he could articulate things he was observing and experiencing.
Moments like this are precisely why we started this journey.
Ripley being able to express himself, let us know his needs, wants, and observations all help us to have a better relationship and give him the best life possible. We don’t always know what our other dogs need or are experiencing, but with Ripley, we do. It’s been life-changing.
The research is underway and we hope to know soon more about what’s really going on in our living room. But until then, we are just two humans hoping to have the best relationship possible with our dogs and maybe inspire a few people along the way to do the same.
