The Sunday Read: ‘Do Our Dogs Have Something to Tell the World?’

As soon as Camille Bromley got Ellie, a black-eyed, bat-eared German shepherd puppy, she trained her to be a good dog. And so she was. Two years on, Ms. Bromley started to think she was a little too obedient. Ellie was hesitant, whining when she was unsure of herself, in a way that clashed with her big muscles and pointy canines.

The solution, maybe, was buttons. Around this time, Ms. Bromley started to see dogs on social media seeming to express their desires by the most absurdly simple, low-tech means possible: stepping on multicolored plastic buttons on the floor, each disc emitting a word when the dog pressed it. Ms. Bromley scrolled through videos on her phone of dogs pawing FOOD and MORE and NOW, sometimes in that order.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.