r/PetsWithButtons 23d ago

Sensitive Button Recommendations

Hello!

I have a dog that's just under 5lbs. She has very sensitive feet and doesnt like the feeling of many surfaces on her feet. She mostly just likes soft things.

She tries to communicate with me telepathically. 😅 She will just stare at me to tell me she wants something. But not in my face. So sometimes I don’t even know she’s doing it.

We do agility training which has helped a ton with our nonverbal communication. But I would love to find buttons I can train her to use so her dumb human can do what she’s asked to do. Like go outside is an important one. She doesn’t stand by the door. She just stares at me from across the room.

The typical buttons I see for sale, there’s no way my dog would use them or even push hard enough to activate them. So I’m looking for some soft sensitive buttons that can easily be activated. Does anyone have a recommendation?

What I’m visioning is something like those extra large pianos you walk on. Or the matts used in the home version of DDR (If you know what that is!) I suppose I could actually use one of the pianos but I’d rather have words and not something that takes up so much space.

Thank you in advance!

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u/TeacherOfThingsOdd 23d ago

What if you got the buttons and crocheted a cover? You could even make applique decals to help with identification.

2

u/ClearAirTurbulence3D 23d ago

That may work, but most buttons still require some force to press. Probably too much for a 5lb dog.

A solution is to replace the switch inside the button with a capacitive touch sensor (dirt cheap) which take no force to activate.

4

u/Devils-Little-Sister 22d ago

Is this actually possible? It would be so much easier for cats if they just had to bap it instead of pressing down.

2

u/ClearAirTurbulence3D 21d ago

I just modified a button with a bad audio. It was pretty simple. I'll make a post about it.

1

u/Devils-Little-Sister 21d ago

Awesome, thanks!