Growing in Trust and Confidence

When we first adopted Macho, I expected him to take a long time to come around. But the more time we spend with him, the more social he becomes.

I think Macho grows significantly over the weekend when we are home all day rather than at when we are at work for part of the day. Over this weekend, he came out of his cage, laid in the living room in his bed, and came up to us while we were hanging out on the couch. He comes out of his cage when we have guests, and although you can tell he is nervous, he will eat queso out of their hands. I think this is a huge step!

The cutest thing happened yesterday. Nick's roommate bought her dog a big raw hide bone. Macho was laying in his cage, and after only smelling the bone, he got up and came over to smell it. Five minutes later, I was in the kitchen and heard a little noise. I looked over, and Macho had stolen the bone from Dora and had it in front of him. Dora came a little later to take it back and left it in the living room. I went to sit back down in the living room, and the next thing I know, Macho came prancing over, grabbed the huge bone in his little month and ran away with it! It was so cute to see this bone in his month that is obviously too big for him. When Dora came to take it back for the second time, Macho stole it again and put it in his bed this time. Of course, I had to go to the store to buy Macho the same bone. I'm going to give it to him tonight. Hopefully he is as excited as he was last night.

I'm still trying to get Macho on a leash, but it's really not working too well. I'm hoping to try more this weekend. I get nervous because he gets very scared when we make him face his fears because sometimes he will be afraid of you for a couple days. But he always turns around and trusts you after some time. He was very afraid of me for a couple days after I clipped his nails. He did great, the noise of the clippers scared him, but other than that he was brave. But when I tried to do his left paws, he got scared again. I still have not been able to clip them, so hopefully that is something I can get to soon!

I just have to tell myself that it will take some time for him to truly trust us. I know one day he will, and I can't wait for it. I just want to cuddle him and be able to pet him while he is outside of his cage. But I know when that day comes, all of our patience will be worth it, and the reward of adopting this little guy will be better than we could have ever imagined.