When Echo arrived at the shelter, the tiny chihuahua seemed pretty much done with humans.
Echo was cradled — likely for safety reasons — in the jacket of the man who brought her in as a stray, making it especially prickly for shelter staff to handle her.
“They took the dog in the jacket and then managed to get the dog out of the jacket and then handed the man back his jacket and he went on his way,” Trish Aleve, a foster volunteer at the Chihuahua Rescue and Transport (CCRT) tells iHeartDogs.
And sure enough, whenever someone at the shelter in Toronto, Ontario, got too close to the sad, surly castaway, she would try to bite them.
“Because of that, they were obviously concerned about adopting directly to the public,” Aleve says. “That’s why they reached out to us.”
Aleve, who has fostered several dogs for CCRT, volunteered to help restore Echo’s faith in humanity.
And so, the brutally underweight dog with the crusty skin came to live with Aleve, joining a trio of dogs named Buster and Harley and Taco.
At first, Echo didn’t care for any of them.
“She kind of came out, was checking things out. She let me touch her a little bit, but was super, super nervous,” Aleve recalls. “She certainly wouldn’t have me pick her up or anything along those lines.”
But in the days ahead, Echo became a little more curious about this strange new world–where it seemed no one had any diabolical plans for her. Not even the other dogs in the household. If anything, the trio tried to make her feel at ease in her new life.
“But it was always on her own terms,” Aleve says. “She would come, curl up on me and in that moment, I could pet her. But if I would go towards her, she would just run way.”
Buster, a therapy dog, offered her a steady, grounding presence.
“He’s not a playful type dog, but he has that calming sense,” Aleve explains. “She gets that and she’ll snuggle up against him if she needs that kind of chill thing.”
And, little by little, Echo found her groove.
For Aleve, that meant not having to chase Echo throughout her home. Or, at least not quite so much.
“She still does that to some degree, but I would only have to do two laps around the kitchen before she’s like, ‘Okay. You got me,” she says.
Then there were the very real signs that Echo actually wasn’t so indifferent to the human in her life.
“And now, she’s actually happy when I get home,” Aleve. “She does the zoomies.”
Soon Echo will have to learn to have faith in humans once again. She’s just been made available for adoption. But this time, thanks to this family, she will have a big headstart.
Think you might be the one who can take her the rest of the way there? Check out Echo’s adoption page here.
You can also follow Echo’s ongoing story here.
