Ay, caramba! Chihuahua lands forever home after foster mum learns he understands only Spanish
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This TikTok screenshot shows the moment Ms Monica Matute realised her chihuahua Nacho understands Spanish instead of English.
PHOTO: MONICA MATUTE/TIKTOK
He is a chihuahua and his name is Nacho, a common Spanish nickname. Still, it came as a surprise to his American foster mum that he would react only when spoken to in Spanish.
Nacho had been timid and seemed untrained when he was found in Los Angeles, the United States, ignoring her spoken commands. But then, she made an unexpected discovery: He did not understand English at all.
In a viral TikTok video uploaded on Oct 1, Ms Monica Matute tries speaking to him in both English and Spanish. But it is only when he hears Spanish that he perks up.
“I hadn’t even thought to speak to him in Spanish, which is ironic since he’s a chihuahua,” Ms Matute told ABC News in a Nov 13 report. Chihuahuas reportedly originated in Mexico.
“The moment I did, he became more energetic than we’d ever seen.”
At one point in the clip, she says “let’s go outside” in Spanish, then follows with “vamos”, meaning “come on”. Nacho instantly jumps off her bed, tail wagging in excitement.
The clip – now with more than 14 million views – has drawn over 15,000 comments of mostly love for Nacho.
“Tell him ‘te amo’ for me,” says one commenter, referencing Spanish for “I love you”. Another wondered: “How long has it been since he heard a familiar voice?”
“His face was like ‘hablas… espanol?’” said yet another, translating to “Do you speak Spanish?”.
Nacho had been staying with Ms Matute as a foster dog after he was found wandering around the Wags and Walks adoption centre in Los Angeles for several days in September.
She said in an Instagram video on Oct 10 that Nacho “is the kind of dog that will follow you everywhere, and is just perfectly content just being your shadow”.
“He loves to burrow into blankets, and he’s happy to nap with whoever’s closest,” she said.
Nacho was relocated in late October to a shelter in Portland, Oregon, where he was adopted by Ms Nancy Garza-Harris and her husband Rick, who drove three hours south from Seattle to take him home.
“Rick sat on a bench, and he jumped right into Rick’s lap, and it was like, ‘Okay, well, that’s that’,” Ms Garza-Harris told ABC News.
She has since renamed Nacho to Rogelio Montoya, a nod to Spanish character Inigo Montoya from the movie The Princess Bride (1987).
But most of the time, she simply calls him “mi hijo” – Spanish for “my son”.
