I do not have a big family in the US. So naturally my family is very close together. However, as my kids started to grow older they wanted their own personal space. Being a modern family my wife and I allow our kids to have a lot of freedom to use their own time.

Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn’t work the way we planned. We realized that at times we started to grow apart; our kids started to stay in their rooms more often. And my wife and I started to spend most of our time in the living room alone.

While on the surface our family setup looks fine, it has unintended consequences. One of them is that my daughter started to have undue stress and developed anxiety two years ago. I thought long and hard about trying to understand what might have caused it. One possible reason I realized was likely because of being alone in her room day in and day out. Was there something my wife and I could have done to change the outcome? Unfortunately in this day trying to keep a family a whole family in one room has become more difficult when everyone is so glued to movie streaming and using social channels.

So I discussed with my wife if we should buy a dog to help my daughter. My wife originally opposed the idea because taking care of pets is a lot of work and requires a lot of commitment. I’m glad that we finally bought a dog and her name is Tofu, a little Havanese.

Tofu helped my kids tremendously. She created “Tofu Time”, which means my kids will come out of their rooms and play with Tofu. My wife and I also noticed that my daughter has become more joyous and also started to speak with us more.

A year later, we realized that Tofu became more lonely and constantly wanted attention. And that set us on another journey to adopt a similar dog. Unfortunately, after several months of looking, we could not find the dog we wanted. And even if we found it there is no guarantee that we can adopt it. Plus there were so many conditions prior to adopting the dog. Finally, we bought another dog and named him Mocha.

Both Tofu and Mocha are such a blessing to our family. They helped put our family back together and helped my daughter face her anxiety. They also created so much joy as they have a carefree attitude. My kids have come out more often and the joy in their faces seeing both Tofu and Mocha is a sight to see.

Growing up I only considered dogs as guard dogs. I never consider them as companions. After coming to the US I could never understand why Americans love their pets so much and even consider dogs as part of their families. Now I know why. Not only they are close companions, but they are saviours too.