Over the last few days, Jonah has made so much progress he has literally made me cry.  He is still a little lump of stress but I feel like I am watching an armadillo begin to unfurl from their protective curl.  Literally. He has spent most of his time sitting up or in a tight ball. Here was his body language last night:

We also had two other ‘breakthroughs’ last night.

1. He wagged his tail for about 8 seconds. EIGHT SECONDS! That is huge considering I have only seen him wag his tail once before, when he first saw our dog, Frankie. And even then it was only two quick, small wags.  Last night, he was tethered in the kitchen when I was bringing Frankie in from outside. He stood up and leaned forward, wagging his tail in what I would anthropomorphize as a “happy” manner.
2. He played (?) with me. Okay, I admit that at first I was only 80% sure he was playing with me. When I took him outside he stood on the steps instead of going straight into the yard. I kind of made a shooing noise and he scampered down into the yard and ran like 10 steps, jumped up onto a flowerbed. Thank goodness no one can see in our yard, because I tried to approximate and instigate dog play behavior (bows, excited moving, play talking) and he ran onto the other side of the yard and back up the stairs to me. When he got up the stairs I did stop because I didn’t want to accidentally intimidate him when he was so close. When almost this exact scenario happened again when he went out before bedtime, I became about 95% sure he was playing with me. His overall body language still didn’t scream ‘play’ but it is such an offshoot from the behavior he typically exhibits with us that I am going to call it play.