09/04/2026
September 2022, I bought my first pack of buttons and tried them with Kaia. She picked up on PEANUT immediately, became obsessed, and refused to use any other buttons. I gave up and put them away.
Then along came Curi, who shortly after his first birthday broke the jingle bells on the back door. I pulled out those 4 old buttons and he took to them immediately, so, frustrated with the poor sound quality, I placed my first FluentPet order for just a few buttons.
Curi's first four words were OUTSIDE, TREATS, PLAY, and TREADMILL. I knew he wanted real walks, but it was well below freezing and I didn't want to be going on walks outside. In less than a week, Curi started combining his buttons to ask for TREADMILL OUTSIDE. I was confused at first, "Curi we cannot take the treadmill outside! Treadmill walk inside!" And then it hit me. He wanted to walk outside.
I still refused to go for a walk at 23°F on slippery ice with a huge puppy who would pull me over, but I did immediately order a 32 pack of buttons since clearly Curiosity had a lot more he wanted to say than just the 4 words I'd given him.