Bran, the viral dog capable of communicating in Spanish with buttons

Hello, I introduce myself.

I'm

and I'm three years old.

My parents rescued me from a shelter.

Before that... well, the truth is that everything is a bit fuzzy... I just remember that my previous family didn't love me anymore... and I ended up in a

.

There he was not happy.

But I was lucky and some people

, and it was there, and shortly after, that I met my real family and they taught me

.

They are called Nuria and Adrián, and we live in

, together with Batman.

He has four legs like me, but he doesn't look like me.

And despite the mythical phrase: "You get along like a dog and a cat", he and I are inseparable.

Two years ago something changed, I saw that my parents stayed at home more and talked about a virus, "

" or something like that they said.

The fact is that, suddenly, they brought some round objects home.

I didn't know what they were, they just wanted me to touch them.

And, in addition, they made a strange sound.

One said:

! It was the first one I played and I learned to press when I wanted someone to give me something to eat.

And now, almost two years later, I already know

!

Talking about prizes so much... I'm going for one, or a few.

Now I leave you with my mom, she explains my story better than me.

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- Nuria, why did you decide to buy the buttons?

- It all started during the lockdown when I discovered

, a language and speech expert.

The way she taught her dog to speak caught my attention, but trying it scared me a little.

There was only information in English and he didn't know if it would work with Bran.

But we still jumped in.

Soon after, Hunger put out a book in which she explained how she worked with her dog, Stella, practicing button

.

The first thing we started teaching Bran was to touch the buttons.

And she did right away.

Since there was almost no information in Spanish about this, I started uploading it to

to show it to people.

Nuria and Adrián live in

(Vizcaya) and adopted Bran in June 2019 after his previous family abandoned him and after being in a kennel.

He was eventually rescued by a protector as being "in

."

And that was where they met Bran.

They also adopted Batman, an eight-year-old cat who was rescued from an abandoned train track shortly after birth.

When the buttons arrived at their house, they decided to create an account on social networks:

, which already has more than two million followers on TikTok and Instagram.

Bran is the first dog to speak Spanish, "and if there was another, its owners didn't upload anything to the networks, because I was investigating and didn't find anything," says Nuria.

This dog already knows more than 15 words, which are divided into different sections through the buttons:

(Bran, Batman, daddy and mommy),

(street, house, balcony and river),

(eating, pampering and play) and

(water, help, ball and mouse).

In addition to "

", which was the first she learned, but which had to be removed from the repertoire because "many of our followers told us that their dogs always asked for a prize", Nuria underlines, so they recommended "not to start teaching with that button," and they removed it.

Not because Bran always asked for food, but because "there are a lot of dogs that are a bit gluttonous and we don't want them to get used to it," she explains.

A 2009

study confirmed that canine intelligence is higher than previously thought.

Among other things, it was shown that dogs are capable of understanding more than

.

"The upper limit of dogs' ability to learn language is based in part on a study of a border collie named Rico who was shown to know 200 spoken words and demonstrated 'rapid learning', which scientists believed only occurred in humans and apes learning language," the report stresses.

But not everyone can make it.

Bran is one of those who do.

And he is on it.

"We have achieved something that we thought we were not going to achieve and we have encouraged people to try it. I did not expect to have this success and it seems very positive to me to have achieved what we have," reflects Nuria.

But yes, they go little by little.

They want Bran to internalize the words, not drown him in them, because "the important thing is to know how to keep it."

So take it easy.

What Bran likes the most is being out on the

.

They are his two favorite words, and the ones he asks for the most.

"Bran is for being on the street. He loves it. We go out at least three times a day and when we return home he slows down because he wants to spend more time on the street. It's very funny," emphasizes Nuria, who also says that eating is another of his passions.

"When he sees owners who usually give him some other prize, he runs away. Even people from the balconies give him food."

But, without a doubt, his great hobby is the

.

"He loves it. He doesn't usually pull on the leash, and when we get close to the beach, he already starts pulling because he wants to get there now."

Nuria and Adrián will continue to teach Bran more words and will show his learning abilities on their social networks.

But they also want to express something else:

.

"You have to help people see that adopted dogs are just as smart, calm, happy and loving and that breed doesn't matter as much as you think. There are many puppies that really need help. We want to show not only that they can learn, but the rescued dogs are just as valid and wonderful. There is no breed or age to learn and to love", says Nuria.

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