Rescue Dog Comes Home With Anxiety, But Everything Changes When He Finds His Voice

Bastian had a tough start in life. After being plucked from Hurricane Florence floodwaters in 2018, the rat terrier mix wound up at a rescue event in New Jersey — and was the only animal that didn't find a new home. After Joelle Andres saw his photo on the web, she adopted the anxious little pup. "His eyes were very soulful, but he looked kind of shut down and forlorn," she told People.

Given all the trauma and upheavals Bastian had been through, he didn't warm up to his new owners right away. "When we first brought him home, he went through this weird period where he didn't quite trust us, but he also didn't want to be alone," she told GeoBeats Animals in a video that's been viewed more than 547,000 times on YouTube. "He really went through a tremendous amount of separation anxiety for almost a year."

Andres, who works in special education, saw some videos of dogs using buttons to communicate with humans, and she decided to try these with Bastian. He quickly figured out how to express what he wanted by pressing buttons such as Walk, Play, Outside, Hungry, and Treat. "It is so important to give pets agency, especially rescue dogs that have not experienced the ability to be co-partners in their own care," Andres says in the video. "I think that was the turning point in my relationship with Bastian, when he realized that he was getting a say in his own experience, his own day-to-day."

Viewers of the YouTube video couldn't get enough of the darling doggo and his transformation from sad sack to prancing pup. "The way he is moving outside is not walking. He is dancing in happiness," one wrote. Another observed, "He's certainly gained a zest for life in your home." Many people also commented on Bastian's newfound communication skills. "That little sad, anxious dog became very bossy with his buttons," one wrote, while another joked, "This little guy communicates better than a lot of humans I know!!"

When it comes to canine communication, humans still have much to learn about how to read a dog's body language and the ways dogs communicate with their paws. Some of us wonder if dogs feel emotions like love and hate. Communication buttons, formally known as Augmentative Interspecies Communication (AIC) devices, give us a glimpse inside dogs' thoughts. Research is underway at places such as the Comparative Cognition Lab at UCSD, which is running a large-scale, years-long project. According to their website, "The use of soundboards has the potential to be a powerful tool through which dogs, cats, and other domestic animals might be able to communicate their needs, wants, and internal states to their owners."

As for Bastian, one viewer of the YouTube video offered a cheeky suggestion for how the clever canine could put his communication skills to good use: "It's only a matter of time before he writes his first novel with those buttons... ❤"