And how about a moment of uplift? Yeah? All right. A viral online phenomenon claims to have further opened the door to human canine communication. Pre-recorded buttons that allow dogs to seemingly talk with their humans.

But are all these button enthusiasts barking up the wrong tree? William Brangham, along with his pup Macy, doggedly pursue the truth.

You didn't know dogs to talk?

It's been a fascination of ours for generations.

Hi there.

Getting man's best friend to talk.

I like to play ball. I like purple bird in the window.

And for good reason, tens of millions of us live with and love the dogs in our lives,

including me, and we want to know what they're thinking.

We love dogs and we love bonding with them.

But I think while we know that they understand us pretty well, many of us still

struggle making sense of what they want. Federico Rosano studies animal communication. He's a cognitive

scientist at the University of California, San Diego. When you see your dog scratching at the door,

you might know they want to get out, but you don't know why they want to get out.

But our furry friends have remained frustratingly mum. That is, until this Australian cattle dog named

Stella stepped onto a button and into online fame. Stella's dog mom is Christina Hunger. She's a speech pathologist who got the idea for these dog

buttons after working with nonverbal children, where she'd often use a tablet to assist them in

communicating. At the same time, I brought a puppy home who was just bursting with communication,

which led me to the question,

if dogs can understand words we say to them,

why can't they say words back?

What if they had a different way to talk

...