Ever wonder what your dog is thinking? You’re not alone. Over the last year, dog “talking” buttons have taken the pet world by storm. With the push — er paw — of a button, dogs are now “telling” their humans what they need, whether that’s water, food or to go outside. Some pups have even become social media famous for their impressive vocabulary, inspiring dog owners everywhere to pick up a set of buttons. Or in the case of Rutledge Chin Feman, a software engineer for Google Nest, to try building their own DIY versions.

“I know I’m biased, but Cosmo is obviously the best dog in the world,” says Rutledge of his pup. When he and his wife adopted Cosmo, a German Shepherd mix and the first dog for both of them, they noticed right away he was skittish. “He was afraid of everything and would do a lot of lunging and barking. It was kind of a forcing function to learn a lot about positive reinforcement training techniques and desensitization…which is how I stumbled on all of this.”

After Rutledge saw a video of dog-talking buttons that blew his mind, he started to build his own set for Cosmo — the perfect hobby to blend his passions for engineering and animals.

He used an electronics prototyping board (a “breadboard”) to hold the buttons, and a small computer (a “Raspberry Pi”) to activate them with light, sound and notifications. The first model, made from a wooden wine box, had just three buttons: “food,” “water” and “outside,” which Rutledge recorded with his own voice. Now, Cosmo’s up to seven buttons — with “ball,” “later,” “love you” and “scritches” (otherwise known as “belly rubs”) added to the mix.

At one point, Rutledge even set the board up so that he received text messages whenever Cosmo pressed a button. “I’ve been in meetings where I’m like, ‘Hold on a sec, I need to silence my phone. My dog is blowing me up right now.’”

Rutledge and his wife will add a “baby” button to Cosmo’s board next, now that their newest family member has arrived. And the wheels are already turning for Rutledge: “I think it will only be a few months before a baby could push buttons and say things — ask for more food or whatever. I think that will be a fun experiment.”

For now, he’s focused on Cosmo and continuing to strengthen their bond using the button board. “I think it’s a really powerful way to see your pet. It really reminds you that they’re intelligent beings who are capable of profound thought, in a way. And they’re constantly observing their world in a way that we don’t usually really give them credit for.”

“It’s a really simple device, it’s all just for fun,” he adds of the process. “And obviously, Cosmo’s a very good boy.”

Yousuf Fauzan’s mother knew she’d be on the phone a lot this October. Every day during the month, she’d talk to her son for hours as he paced around his home in California. “She would get irritated, she would disconnect the call, then I’d call again 15 minutes later.”

Calling his mom — and pretty much everyone he knows — was how Yousuf, a YouTube software engineer, passed the time while getting his steps in for “Walktober,” Google’s annual employee walking competition. “I don’t talk to people on the phone often, but during October, I call anyone and everyone I’ve ever known.” After spending his workday walking during meetings, Yousuf would lap around the inside of his condo from 7:00 p.m. until 4:00 a.m. to hold his top spot on the leaderboard. By the end of the month, he’d accumulated more than two million steps.

Planning lead Tiffany Bartish-Katz says this is the kind of “fierce but friendly” competition that Walktober attracts. Started in 2011 as a local effort in Google’s Cambridge, Massachusetts office, Walktober quickly went global: This year, more than 26,000 employees across 190 offices joined the competition, putting in over five billion steps. “I’m always a little awestruck by the number of people who engage in this very simple, friendly, fun, grassroots project,” Tiffany says. And the planning team works hard to make sure everyone gets in the spirit — from ultra walkers like Yousuf, to those who are adding just a few more thousand steps to their routines.

Some Walktober participants decided to put their step counts towards a good cause. Last year, Greg Kroleski, a Google Cloud Product Manager, walked for 24 hours straight. As he considered doing another 24-hour challenge this year, a coworker suggested tying it to a fundraiser. “A lot of people paid attention last year. I wanted to direct that attention to something good.” Greg dedicated this year’s challenge, and his team’s entire Walktober effort, to raise awareness for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CF), a chronic disease that causes overwhelming fatigue. He and his colleagues ended up raising $14,000. As for the 24-hour challenge? Greg logged over 204,000 steps that day, breaking a Google Walktober record…for a few hours, at least. “Unfortunately, the next day, someone else broke my record.” All the more reason to give it another go next year. “You might see me again,” he says.

Ziad Reslan, a Product Policy Advisor at Google, also channeled his team’s Walktober efforts towards something good. “I wanted to spend the entire last day of Walktober walking as an ode to the journeys of millions of refugees who have no choice but to walk to get to safety,” he says. To raise awareness for LGBTQ+ refugees in the Middle East in particular, Ziad organized a walk from Google’s San Francisco office to its Mountain View headquarters — a familiar 38.8-mile route for California commuters. He received over $25,000 in pledged donations from fellow Googlers, with a handful joining him throughout the day.

When Ziad and his colleagues reached the Mountain View campus that evening, he was overwhelmed: “I teared up remembering the first time I had ever been [to Mountain View] wishing to become a Googler,” he says. “And now here I was, walking to it surrounded by other Googlers for a good cause.”