thing is I have soooooo many problems with buttons.
humans end up going 'OOOH LOOK HE'S SO SMART' for reasons wildly unrelated to why the dog is actually currently smart
they then try to hold the dog to at-best toddler standards and at-worst adult human standards
meanwhile they keep ignoring the actual communication attempts of the dog in front of them
buttons promote a very human-centric model of intelligence and completely disregard the ways in which dogs are so much smarter than us
we live lives in which we force our pets to exist on our time scale and our sensory world. and yet we would rather spend $$$ and hours getting the pet to say please than actually pay attention to even the broadest swathes of their behavior?
they blind us to ways in which dogs genuinely do have different/limited cognition compared to humans because we're so busy playing fucking ouija board with them
also I have two sets of buttons and should probably pull them out again so K'seil can remind me to refill the water bowl but like. know their limits.
cognition is so so so fascinating I am obsessed with how my nw students experience the world and what they find easy versus impossible. 5 years teaching nosework classes, averaging 8 hrs a week, and dogs will routinely 'cheat' by watching me set the hide, but if they watch another dog find the hide they cannot put that together. this is so cool we can learn so much about how their brains work and instead we're just. ouija board bullshit.
