The Story of Ripley The Talking Dog

A talking dog? How did we get here?

This the first photo of Ripley after bringing him home at 8 weeks old. He already was trying to climb into the living wall. 

“My dog talks.” You should see the looks I get when I deliver that line to a stranger with a straight face. It’s interesting to see the usual laughter or a nervous chuckle turn into the realization that I’m being serious. My dog talks using buttons. Each with a prerecorded word. He has 116 of them to date (and counting). Anyone that has seen Ripley’s videos of him communicating with us, usually wants to know how we did it. Eventually we had so many people asking us how that I figured the best way would be just to show everyone. We recorded our entire button adventure from Day One. Now that we’re more than 2 years into it, Dad said it’s time to look back.

In the beginning there were 2 buttons.

Baby Ripley goes with Dad on a Pup Cup Adventure. 

When we brought Ripley home at 8 weeks old, we didn’t start with over 100 words. Far from it in fact. On day one there were only two buttons. We set up one Ring camera on two hextiles with the words Potty and Water. When we put Ripley next to his buttons, he was immediately intrigued by them. Then he hit Water and we celebrated and rushed to get him his water dish. It was the beginning of a journey bigger than either one of the humans could even imagine. Over time we gradually added more buttons. As Ripley grew, his vocabulary grew and his soundboard started to get larger in size. As this happened to made a few changes to his board’s layout and we changed the location of the button board a couple times. Near the end of the first six months we were conjuring up talks about where we were going to move the board next.

Where do we go from here?

Ripley poses for the camera. 6 Months old.

Throughout our early journey there were ups and downs, moments of interest and apathy, and of course chaos mixed with cuteness. We ran into some issues with regards to space, how we wanted to capture footage and record data, and how to keep Ripley from eating his board. With a little patience and creativity, we managed to create a positive learning environment for Ripley to excel with his communication. We had come incredibly far in our communication in half a year, but we had no idea what was in store in the next 6 months. We’d make one more permanent change to the board before Ripley’s vocabulary excelled to even newer heights. Check out the linked video of the Story of Ripley The Talking Dog Part 1!

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