A pet dog who sensed his owner was sick used verbal sound buttons to alert her—hours before her symptoms arose.
Cache, a golden retriever, had noticed his owner was unwell and proceeded to tell her by pressing the sound buttons he uses to communicate.
A video shows 2-year-old Cache pressing the buttons “sick,” “friend,” and “ mom,” referring to his owner.
At first, his owner, Christina Lee, 32, was skeptical about what Cache said.
But five hours later, she started to feel nauseous and realized that Cache had known she was sick before she even noticed it.
Ms. Lee, a software engineer, bought Cache sound buttons after reading “How Stella Learned to Talk” by Christina Hunger.
The book details how to teach dogs how to “speak.”
But little did she know that two years later, Cache would be able to communicate with her to such an extent.
Over the last couple of years, Cache has learned to press buttons with pre-recorded words to talk to Ms. Lee.
She taught him by pressing the buttons herself whenever she would do something.
Now Cache knows several words like “outside,” “food,” and even “sick.”
“It was all demonstration-based. I wouldn’t give him treats or anything. If I went outside I would press outside,” Ms. Lee, who lives in northern California, said. “It took him a while to start using the buttons, but once he did, we were off to the races.”
Cache first struggled to conceptualize the word “sick” when she introduced it and often mistook it for every negative emotion.
“I introduced the sick button a year ago when I had the flu and since then he’s pressed the button when I’ve been crying as well. It’s very interesting,” she said.
“This is the first time that he’s predicted when I would get sick ahead of time.
“I think he could smell it on me or something.”
