FluentPet Speak Up! Key Vocab Kit with Clearer Upward-Facing Sound - 12 Recordable Buttons w/Pre-Installed Batteries, 6 HexTile Button Mats - Training Dog & Cat Communication Buttons

Bought this for our dog, we are still trying to train him to touch the button. The Noise level is fine, easy to use and good quality.

Not sure what I expected when I bought these but now, 6 or 7 months later, I'm blown away! The first couple weeks were slow while I found my footing and learned what I really need to do to be effective at teaching my dogs and cats to use buttons. The Button Bootcamp in the Circle app (included with purchase) has been helpful. Here are some things I've learned along the way I wish I'd known going in. Like I see others do, I made this process more difficult than it needed to be in the beginning. I added one button COOKIE right away before realizing we really don't usually have cookies (treats) inside, mostly outside, so they really didn’t use it. Then I read somewhere to add 3 to 6 buttons all at once and just use the appropriate one before each action. For example, before going outside I verbally say "outside" then press OUTSIDE then take them outside. This is called modeling. I repeated every time. No extra words, just modeling the button and its action with verbal also. In just a couple days one of my dogs began using the buttons. He could tell me when he wanted outside, or eat, water, etc. Give your learner silent time to process the new language and skill you're teaching. We talk to our dogs like they understand us but silence says so, so much more. Body language is more powerful. After modeling a button, give him up to 30 or even 45 silent seconds to think it over and respond. Watch him for body language or context clues. You model OUTSIDE and after 30 seconds he goes to the door and looks at you, that is a direct response! Honor that. The first words you teach should be basic core words. EAT can be for meals or snacks or food rewards (food as a reward should be avoided when teaching buttons. Let the button action be its own reward - for example if OUTSIDE is pressed, taking him outside is the reward.) WATER can mean drink, rain, etc. OUTSIDE can be for potty or play. You can add clarifying words later, start with the basics. Your dog will likely take time to "babble" and "map" his buttons. Babbling is just what it sounds like Pressing buttons just for the sake of pressing buttons. Every time I add new buttons, he presses it several times in a few days just getting to know the button. I've learned that when my dog Major wants to talk to me he will always wait for eye contact. He will press a button then either turn to look at me or look in his mirror to see me. That's my context clue that he's talking to me. Sometimes he will just go over and press a lot of buttons and not make eye contact. He's just making connections for himself in his own brain. Learn how your dog communicates directly with you as opposed to babbling or mapping, it will likely have some eye contact. Spend time enough with the buttons yourself so you also have the muscle memory to model effectively. Give your dog the ability to make decisions for his own life. A simple option of YES and NO buttons is a great way to start. My dog Major has 40 active buttons now and over 50 more ready to add. I try to stay ahead of him, meaning I try to have more words on the board than he knows. He learns so quickly it can be difficult at times on a fixed income. He is my main user out of 4 dogs and 2 cats. The others use them sometimes but really don't care much. They're good communicators without them. Major talks up a storm every day. He likes to narrate his life and surroundings and even manipulate his family! He will press COOKIE then look at the other dogs. Simon always jumps up and runs to me when he hears the cookie button and Major will steal his spot! This is almost daily! Lastly, making mistakes is an essential part of learning and growing. Give yourself (and your learner) grace! Like humans, dogs and cats and other animals are intelligent, emotional beings. We all make mistakes and can all learn from them. There's no exact right way to do this but you can't be successful if you don't try. The quality of these buttons and hextiles is exceptional. The battery life is likely standard. I purchased a package of 100 spare batteries so we're ready for that time. Each button holds 3 little batteries. The Speak Up buttons are quite loud and for myself, at least, can be heard well throughout most of my home. You might consider the FluentPet Connect buttons if you're harder of hearing or wish to get text alerts on button pushes while you're gone. I can't afford those but these Speak Up buttons are great. I used velcro tape to stick his sound board to the floor and stop the sliding. He's 110# of lap dog and doesn't realize his paw strength sometimes. I also bought a little thermal label maker. The stickers that come with the buttons don't have enough contrast for me to be able to see them while standing. The labelmaker was about 20$ and solves that problem for me. Good luck and enjoy the process! For us, it's been life changing!

It works well, but not dog does not. Only problem I knocked it down for was the mat is very chewable and scratchable.

Adopted a 10 mo old pup in October ‘25 and quickly realized he was smart as a whippet (heh heh)! He’s a great mix of a bunch of large breeds. I bought him these to teach him to communicate. The size is great for his paws. At first he was pretty aggressive with it and buttons flew all over the place, but he soon learned to press them more gently and still get the sound. I really like the mats that hold the buttons. It’s super helpful to have the buttons secure. My dog now independently uses 7 buttons. We just started in February! I highly recommend these buttons, but be ready to have your own voice yelling things at you.

I've wanted to try this for a long time, but waited due to the ages and health situations of my prior pets, who have since passed. I now have two 8 mo kittens, who are very interactive and constantly trying to "talk" to me, so I finally sprung for it, figuring now is the ideal time for them to learn. We're still in the very early stages of using the buttons, so my rating is not based on the efficacy of the language-learning system, but the quality of the physical product. Pros: * Buttons are easy for small paws to press. * Method is straightforward. * Physical product is quick to set up, nice looking, and well-packaged. * Different colored mats for different parts of speech is an interesting idea and seems like an improvement to their original product (which I only saw in videos, but appeared to have no color coding and to rely only on spatial memory). Cons (mostly issues due to the $129 price tag): * Sound quality is a little fuzzy (no better than off-brand buttons, which I briefly tried with a prior pet) and one of my buttons is weirdly louder and another fainter compared to the others. * When removing cut-outs to place buttons into mats, neoprene backing feels very thin. It seems like it could accidentally be punched through if one is too enthusiastic. * Sticker labels seem dog-centric, along with some oddly specific ones for a "basic vocab set" in which one can record only 12 word options. I personally might have preferred a sheet of blank labels (*ideally* ones with a wet-erase surface and a thin-tipped non-toxic wet-erase pen, so that they could be edited). * Not much can be said with 12 words, especially in a multi-pet and/or multi-human household, which needs a button at least for each pet if not multiple people. For $129 it seems like they could at least include 16 buttons. Having just a few more word options could add a lot of value in practice. Overall, given the price of this package, one might expect a little more attention to detail in terms of the product quality/usability and consideration of a larger customer base. This last thought is purely speculative and does not effect my rating, but I'm wondering if it might make more sense to have differently colored and/or patterned button tops to provide clearer visual cues to link to specific word meanings. In early online videos of Bunny (from before the FluentPet system was released) generic buttons were used that were an array of bright colors, and my understanding is that those are what she first learned with. FluentPet seems to have updated their mats to allow different colors for different parts of speech, but the buttons themselves are all still white. I realize that cats and dogs see colors differently than humans do, but they do have some shade differentiation and can distinguish between high contrast visual patterns. Is it necessary to still rely almost entirely on spatial memory, or is this making potentially limiting assumptions about how animals learn language? There are little stick-figure drawings on the sticker labels, but I suspect those are more helpful to the humans. Conclusion: I still feel optimistic about this product and look forward to seeing how (if) my cats progress with it. At the same time, I see only 2 clear advantages to purchasing this system as opposed to constructing one's own with off-brand buttons and floor mats. (1) The smaller buttons are easier for use by little paws. (2) There is no leg work, in that all the pieces are there.... Constructing one's own system would require finding the right mats and buttons, figuring out how to attach the buttons, etc., and I'm not sure how the cost would compare. I haven't seen any small paw/cat-sized generic buttons, so I would probably repurchase this, mainly for that reason.... On the other hand, I think that if I had a big dog who could handle the bigger off-brand buttons, I might have preferred the DYI route, since the button sound quality is not any better, and it would be easier to experiment with button spacing (for a larger animal) or with color-word association in the DIY case.

Quality is improved in every area from standard design word buttons. The recording is clear, unmuffled, and (reasonably) loud. The foam holders secure the buttons firmly, and are quite grippy to the ground. The biggest thing for me is they’re not able to be accidentally reset, bc of a tight switch toggle switch on the bottom vs the standard press button on the side. My Aussie has had buttons for about 2 and a half years, and only ever learned 2 of them. Simply bc the standard button design resets with a quick press on an easily accessible side button, so they would get bumped constantly and become useless to her, so she never really loved using them because of the inconsistency in their usefulness to her. I’ve had the new buttons for 2 days, she already has four buttons, three that she already understands and is using independently. she is already choosing to use them to communicate and largely ignoring the old buttons after just 2 days. Also notable, she seems to prefer the small button size, and is having an easier time learning to target the words she wants to use with the smaller buttons. Everything about them design wise is an improvement on my old, standard design buttons. But the fact the she clearly prefers them and will finally be able to expand her “vocabulary” because they’re buttons do not accidentally reset and randomly become useless and frustrating for her because of the design improvements on these buttons is the biggest selling point for me.

Of course, we've seen so many YouTube videos of the pets who use these buttons, and we're enamored with the idea of our cats using them. I downloaded am iPhone app called "The Simple Clicker" free version, which, after a few sessions, I decided to purchase the Pro version of since it's only $1.99😃 First, I "charged" the clicker, meaning that every time you click, you give the pet a treat so it learns to associate the sound with a treat. Next, I had to train our cats to become comfortable with stepping on the neoprene pads. The first step was placing treats on the mats for 2-3 sessions. It seems like our cats didn't like the texture of stepping on the mats. I think it's also worth noting that it's likely a very good idea to allow the mats to sit out for a few days--outside of the package -- so they can off-gas, (meaning release any volatile compounds that give it that weird odor. in case you’re wondering, I did look it up, and neoprene is not likely to be toxic to humans, so I assume it is also not toxic to pets. However, I figure if I can smell that smell, then it’s probably offensive to most pets as well. Granted, I am very sensitive to odors, but still, I am sure that any animal is even more sensitive to odors than I am). The next step will be getting the cats to put their paws on the button. I really do not know how I am going to do that, and I have not gotten to that part yet. One other thing to note is that training is recommended to be done before regularly scheduled meals occur, that “treats“ should not comprise more than 10% of an animal diet yet should still be within Reasonable dietary nutritious guidelines, and that crunchy treats are a great opportunity to promote the animals dental health. And I haven’t done research on this part yet, but I am sure there are published recommendations for ingredients and macros for treats according to the type of animal you have. Anyway, I seem to be our pets favorite animal for the moment ha ha ha because I’m the one giving them so many treats! I also found that, depending on I’m not sure what 😆 sometimes, I can use their regular kibble as they’re reinforcement with the Clicker, seems not only much more economical but also very likely more nutritious as well as well yeah more nutritious but I have found that both cats, at different times, have found the treats I mean they’re they’re regular kibble to be motivating at sometimes and not motivating at other times. As you can see from the picture, Billie (eating) found their regular kibble to be motivating during this session, but Ella (on the right) didn’t. During the next session, they reversed! 😆 By the way, fluent pet does give you a link to download their free training guide as well as resources to join the quote fluent pet community once you purchase the item and give them your email. I mean I’m sure the email is for marketing but, so what, right? 😄 So, if I am successful in getting our cats to press the buttons, then we will expand two more tiles. We I am having so much fun with this! And it’s providing great bonding time with the cats, they are clearly enjoying it, L and funny thing is that my search of none suggest making the First button be a treat button. However, the fluent pet res pet to think that the only purpose for pushing a button is getting food treats. So that makes me question whether I should have charged the clicker with food at all. But anyway, here we are, so I don’t know… At any rate, the cats and I are having fun! I highly recommend this as well as the app I mentioned! I can’t wait to make more progress!

The button system itself is great for dogs. This brand of buttons is also the loudest and clearest. But the price? Absolutely unjustified given that they malfunction and stop working very quickly. Less than two months and half of my board is now not functional. Don't splurge on these. Get literally almost any other buttons for 1/4 of the price on sale somewhere and train your dog with those, because the sound quality is only for the humans' benefit. Your dog learns their meaning based on relative placement. My puppy and I also use a combination of "this or that" style communication- left paw on my hand for option A, right paw on right hand for option B. Like "Do you need to potty (put left hand down) or are you hungry (put right hand down)?" And she puts her paw on left hand to tell me she needs potty. Equipment doesn't matter as much as training quality is what I'm saying. I've used pieces of cardboard with words written on them glued to a board before! So don't waste your money on a brand name that will break so quickly. I also don't like how small these are for medium to large breed puppie. Puppies don't always have the coordination/control to hit the small buttons and it can lead to frustration when training (it did for my husky girl at first).

These arrived in the U.K. from the US in about a week via Royal Mail. Super tracking. 16 buttons for about £4 a button. Includes batteries fitted and are the genuine product. No customs charges and delivery included. Bargain vs the official site!

For the price of this product I was totally expecting better. The sound is loud enough but the quality is actually quite bad, it sounds very muffled. I have purchased cheap non-branded pet buttons with much clearer sound quality. The reason why I purchased this was because the buttons were advertised as "light touch" and while the buttons were lighter to press than other pet buttons I have purchased, they are still too hard to press for a cat, makes training very difficult.

Good quality. Rather expensive.

Poor quality. All of the buttons are the older first generation model that has the speaker on the bottom and no holes on the top. That makes the volume quite faint. If I'd realized that I would not have ordered this set so I'm pretty disappointed. Also 3 of the buttons don't work properly - the seem to have speaker issues and are more quiet and/or crackly. I do not recommend this set and I plan on returning it. For the price this feels like a rip off as the quality just isn't there. I own the next generation buttons as well (the ones with the holes) and they are a lot better. But of course you can't order a tile kit with those buttons on canadian amazon. Kind of wish I had no decided to go with fluent pet in the first place. I may look around for other products that are compatible with the buttons I have.

我が家の小型犬はビビリでボタンを押す力が弱いです。他のボタンを使っていましたが、押しているのに反応しないことが多く、だんだんボタンを押さなくなってきました。 日本で発売するのとわかり、すぐに購入しました。 我が家には超大型犬と小型犬がいるのですが、力の差があるのに、同じように反応してくれるので、ボタンを押す回数が増えています。 先ほども、おさんぽのボタンを押すので「おさんぽ？」と聞くとワン！と返事をしてくれます。 お水、おさんぽ、抱っこ、おやつのボタンを用意しています。 犬も気持ちが伝わるのが楽しい様子です。 もっとボタンの数を増やしたいと思います。