Tags
More for You
-
A safe, stable home can change lives for the better. Here’s how Habitat for Humanity wants to make that possible for everyone.
Better health, better jobs, and a brighter future all start with access to a safe, affordable home.
A single door can open up a world of endless possibilities. For homeowners, the front door of their house is a gateway to financial stability, job security, and better health. Yet for many, that door remains closed. Due to the rising costs of housing, 1 in 3 people around the world wake up without the security of safe, affordable housing.
Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has made it their mission to unlock and open the door to opportunity for families everywhere, and their efforts have paid off in a big way. Through their work over the past 50 years, more than 65 million people have gained access to new or improved housing, and the movement continues to gain momentum. Since 2011 alone, Habitat for Humanity has expanded access to affordable housing by a hundredfold.
A world where everyone has access to a decent home is becoming a reality, but there’s still much to do. As they celebrate 50 years of building, Habitat for Humanity is inviting people of all backgrounds and talents to be part of what comes next through Let’s Open the Door, a global campaign that builds on this momentum and encourages people everywhere to help expand access to safe, affordable housing for those who need it most. Here’s how the foundation to a better world starts with housing, and how everyone can pitch in to make it happen.
Volunteers raise a wall for the framework of a new home during the first day of building at Habitat for Humanity’s 2025 Carter Work Project. Globally, almost 3 billion people, including 1 in 6 U.S. families, struggle with high costs and other challenges related to housing. A crisis in itself, this also creates larger problems that affect families and communities in unexpected ways. People who lack affordable, stable housing are also more likely to experience financial hardship in other areas of their lives, since a larger share of their income often goes toward rent, utilities, and frequent moves. They are also more likely to experience health problems due to chronic stress or environmental factors, such as mold. Housing insecurity also goes hand-in-hand with unstable employment, since people may need to move further from their jobs or switch jobs altogether to offset the cost of housing.
Affordable homeownership creates a stable foundation for families to thrive, reducing stress and increasing the likelihood for good health and stable employment. Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs homes with individual families, but it also strengthens entire communities as well. The MicroBuild® Initiative, for example, strengthens communities by increasing access to loans for low-income families seeking to build or repair their homes. Habitat ReStore locations provide affordable appliances and building materials to local communities, in addition to creating job and volunteer opportunities that support neighborhood growth.
Marsha and her son pose for a photo while building their future home with Southern Crescent Habitat for Humanity in Georgia. Everyone can play a part in the fight for housing equity and the pursuit of a better world. Over the past 50 years, Habitat for Humanity has become a leader in global housing thanks to an engaged network of volunteers—but you don’t need to be skilled with a hammer to make a meaningful impact. Building an equitable future means calling on a wide range of people and talents.
Here’s how you can get involved in the global housing movement:- Speaking up on social media about the growing housing crisis
- Volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build in your local community
- Travel and build with Habitat in the U.S. or in one of 60+ countries where we work around the globe
- Join the Let’s Open the Door movement and, when you donate, you can create your own personalized door
- Shop or donate at your local Habitat ReStore
Every action, big and small, drives a global movement toward a better future. A safe home unlocks opportunity for families and communities alike, but it’s volunteers and other supporters, working together with a shared vision, who can open the door for everyone.
Visit habitat.org/open-door to learn more and get involved today.
-
Stepmom makes bold move after being pressured to quit her job to raise stepdaughter’s baby
It ignited a powerful conversation about what a grandparent’s responsibilities really are.
What is a grandparent’s role in taking care of their grandchildren? This is a question with a billion different answers, depending on who you ask, and one that can lead to a lot of conflict within a family.
Some grandparents want to take on an active role in their grandkid’s lives, which can lead to unsolicited visits and other forms of boundary crossing. Others feel that their child rearing days are over, and that they’ve earned the right to take on less responsibility, which can also lead to stress and hurt feelings.
A story that went viral on Reddit’s AITA forum further complicated this conundrum, since the woman at the center of the controversy was a stepparent.
The backstory behind the viral post
At the time of writing her post, the woman, 38, met her husband Sam, 47, ten years ago, when his daughter, Leah, 25, was 15 (Leah’s mom passed away when she was 10). The couple married five years ago after Leah had moved out to go to college.
When Leah became pregnant she wanted to keep the baby, but her boyfriend didn’t. After the disagreement, the boyfriend broke up with her. This forced Leah to move back home because she couldn’t afford to be a single parent and live alone on a teacher’s salary.
Leah’s story is familiar to many young mothers facing similar difficulties. The father isn’t involved in the baby’s life as a caretaker or financially. Sadly, according to the U.S. Census Bureau 40% of all children in the U.S. are born without their biological fathers living in the home.
The new mother is a teacher and can’t afford to live on her own with a child. According to a 2024 Redfin study, Portland, OR leads the nation with teachers able to afford 91.3% of apartments near their schools, followed closely by Pittsburgh at 83.9%. Still, nationally the average teacher can afford less than half of nearby rentals, and homeownership remains out of reach for most educators.
The situation gets complicated
The author of the Reddit post, now a new stepgrandmother, had reservations. She says, “I had concerns about how she was going to raise a child on a teacher’s salary by herself. I suggested getting him to pay child support. She did not want that. Sam thought I should stay out of it.”
Unfortunately, any trepidations she had were confirmed. She writes, “Once she had the baby around 4 months back, Leah seemed to realize having a baby is not the sunshine and rainbows she thought it was. She barely got any sleep during the last four months. All the while Sam was helping her with the baby while I did almost all chores myself.”
She continues to say, “Now her leave is ending. She did not want to leave the baby at daycare or with a nanny. Sam and I both work as well.”
A grandmother cares for her grandchild. Photo credit: Canva Leah asked her stepmother if she would stay home with the baby. The stepmother said no because she never wanted to have a baby and she has a job. “I asked why Leah can’t stay home with the baby herself,” the woman wrote. “She said how she was young and had to build a career. I said many people take breaks to raise kids, and she broke down crying about how she was so tired all the time being a mom and needed something else in her life too.”
After the woman told her stepdaughter no, her husband pressured her to stay home with the baby. But she refused to give up her job to raise her stepdaughter’s child. “Leah said yesterday how she wished her mom was alive since she would have had her back. She said I didn’t love her, and my husband is also mad at me,” the woman wrote. The woman asked the Reddit community if she was in the wrong for “refusing to help my stepdaughter with the baby,” and the community responded with rapturous support.
The Reddit comments were supportive
“[The woman] should tell her husband to knock it off and stop trying to pressure her into raising his daughter’s baby. If he wants a family member to look after her baby while she works, then he can do it,” one person wrote.
“This is Leah’s baby that she alone chose to have. That doesn’t obligate you to change YOUR life to suit her desires. The whole business of saying you don’t love her because you won’t quit your job to watch her baby is manipulative and messed up, and I’m shocked your husband is siding with her,” another added.
Leah and many women like her are in this situation because, in many places, teachers are underpaid, rent is high, and not all dads pay child support, even those required by law.
Another commenter noted that the baby is much more the father’s responsibility than the stepmother’s, saying ” Leah should consider seeking child support from her ex. Her kid should be getting that money.”
While there are resources to help stepparents connect with their stepchildren and step-grandchildren, it’s important to remember that the responsibility to raise a child ultimately rests with the parents.
This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated.
-
77-year-old ‘hip-hop granny’ impresses and inspires with her dance moves
Ms. Stephanie didn’t even start formal dance lessons until she was almost 30.
Stephanie Walsh isn’t your average hip-hop dancer. At 77, “Ms. Stephanie” is still able to hold her own on the dance floor, popping and locking with people a third of her age, and she loves it. When you see her dance (and her enviable muscle tone) you might think she’d been a trained dancer all her life. But in actuality, she didn’t take any formal dance lessons until she was almost 30.
She didn’t start dancing until she was almost 30
Walsh told Growing Bolder, an active lifestyle brand, that she had wanted her daughter to dance when she was little, so she got her ballet lessons, which the daughter hated. Realizing that dancing was her dream and not her daughter’s, Walsh took her kiddo out of ballet and started classes herself right away. She had always loved to dance and developing her skills only led to more and more dancing.
These days, Ms. Stephanie gets her dance moves on at Fusion Fitness, where she encourages people to “dance like EVERYONE is watching.” One video of her dancing at Fusion has gone viral multiple times, and it’s easy to see why. Check this out:
“Reposting this video of Ms.Stephanie & I since it going viral again,” shared @fiercefitnessty on TikTok in 2023. “This video will always be a vibe. One thing Ms.Stephanie and I created was magic. We dance from our hearts. My classes are always about creating a Fierce vibe for everyone to show up and show out!”
It’s not just the dancing. It’s the intensity. It’s the full presence in the moment in her face and in her movements. She’s there for it, and she brings everybody with her.
“It’s the “I’m a badass” facial expression for me!
” wrote one commenter on Facebook.“I dislocated my shoulder just watching that
” shared another.“She can throw it back like the rest of them. You go girl!” shared another.
Dancing has kept her going through the hard times
Walsh shared that dancing has helped her get through many difficult periods in her life.
A few years later, Ms. Stephanie is still thriving and dancing. She even has a fan page dedicated to her on Instagram, with posts from as recently as May 2025 showing she’s still doing what she loves:
Love it when people prove that age truly is just a number!
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
-
Cats save the day after family accidentally brings home the wrong dog from daycare
The family had no idea until their cats jumped into action.
It’s not a secret that nearly all golden retrievers are identical. Honestly, magic has to be involved for owners to know which one belongs to them when more than one golden retriever is around. Seriously, how do they all seem to have the same face? It’s like someone fell asleep on the copy machine when they were being created.
Outside of collars, harnesses and bandanas, immediately identifying the dog that belongs to you has to be a secret skill because at first glance, their personalities are also super similar. That’s why it’s not surprising when one family dropped off their sweet golden pooch at daycare and to be groomed, they didn’t notice the daycare sent out the wrong dog.
The cats were the first ones to notice
See, not even their human parents can tell them apart because when the swapped dog got home, nothing seemed odd to the owners at first. She was freshly groomed so any small differences were quickly brushed off. But this accidental doppelgänger wasn’t fooling her feline siblings.
Once the dog was in their house, they noticed that their cats started behaving strangely towards their canine sibling. The cats started attacking the dog, likely trying to get it to tell them what they did with their real dog sister. Cat slaps and a house full of strange people didn’t dampen the imposter’s spirit though, in fact, that’s what helped reveal the switcharoo.
This dog kept handing out face kisses and had no interest in seeing her favorite neighbor. After putting all of those things together, the owners decided to hightail it to the vet’s office to scan the dog’s microchip. Alas, they indeed had the wrong dog.
It would have been a great prank, though.
“We just never even thought that that would happen, and of course we thought we would know right? Like we’re her parents, we would know something was wrong, we would know right off the bat that it wasn’t Ehmi,” Kebby Kelley told Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Seems both golden retrievers got to go on a really strange adventure that deserves a lifetime of delicious dog treats for the confusion.
This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated.
-
William Shatner describes the incredible pain he felt when he finally went into orbit
He had a profound experience of the “overview effect.”
Statistically speaking, the number of humans who have traveled into space is insignificant. But the experience of leaving our home planet and venturing into the great beyond is incredibly significant for the individuals who have actually done it. One of those fortunate humans is actor William Shatner, who spent three years pretending to hurtle through space in his iconic role as Captain James T. Kirk on the original Star Trek series. As captain of the USS Enterprise, Captain Kirk was dedicated to exploring “strange new worlds,” seeking out “new life and new civilizations,” and boldly going “where no man has gone before.”
Naturally, Shatner has spent a lot of time pondering what it would be like to actually experience leaving Earth, and when he took the opportunity to join Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin trip to space in October 2021 at age 90, he was able to compare how his expectations met up with reality. Shatner shared an excerpt from his book with Variety, and it reveals that his initial reaction to being in space was surprisingly dark.
“I love the mystery of the universe,” Shatner wrote. “I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely… all of that has thrilled me for years…”
What Shatner actually saw when he looked into space
However, as he looked out the window of the spacecraft (a real one, not a screen on a film set) and looked in the direction opposite Earth, “there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold,” he wrote. “All I saw was death. I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing.”
As he turned back toward “the light of home,” he saw the opposite. “I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.”
Then he had a stunning revelation: “Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong.”
Again, this is a man who has spent much of his life thinking about space, not as an astronaut or astronomer or astrophysicist, but as a human being stuck on the Earth’s surface, struck with wonder about what’s out there. He explained what he had been wrong about:
“I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film ‘Contact,’ when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, ‘They should’ve sent a poet.’ I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.
“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”
The overview effect and what it means for all of us
Shatner explained how this “sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner” for many astronauts when they view Earth from orbit. It’s part of the “overview effect,” the profound shift in perspective that comes with seeing our collective home from a distance. With no visible borders between nations or peoples, it becomes clear that our divisions are all manmade, which can change the way we view humanity as a whole.
The experience left Shatner with renewed conviction to focus on what we share in common.
“It reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement,” he wrote, “and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart. In this insignificance we share, we have one gift that other species perhaps do not: we are aware, not only of our insignificance, but the grandeur around us that makes us insignificant. That allows us perhaps a chance to rededicate ourselves to our planet, to each other, to life and love all around us. If we seize that chance.”
He chose reflection over champagne
Upon returning to Earth, Bezos offered Shatner champagne, but he turned down the offer because he needed a moment to collect his thoughts on what he had just experienced. He told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show that the trip gave him a moment to reflect on his life. “What’s equally important is caring, loving, the planet is going to be inundated, unless we do something about it,” he told Fallon. “All the deep things that we should be thinking about, every so often, we need to be reminded. And that moonshot, that did it to me.”
Just beautiful. Since most of us will never leave Earth, we can take inspiration from those who have, acknowledge our essential oneness and do everything in our power to protect our beautiful, life-giving home.
Shatner shares more of his reflections on life on this planet and beyond in his most recent book, “Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder.”
This article originally appeared four years ago. It has been updated.
-
A mechanic found hundreds of canvases in a dumpster. Now, they’re worth millions.
One man’s trash is literally another man’s treasure.
An odd trinket bought at a thrift shop turns out to be a bona fide antique. A small fortune is found stashed inside a piece of furniture on the side of the road. These are the magical jackpot moments that seem almost too good to be true, and yet, real stories like these keep the hope alive in our hearts.
In September 2017, auto mechanic Jared Whipple received a call from a friend about an abandoned barn in Watertown, Connecticut, filled with several large canvases, each with bold, colorful displays of car parts. Considering Whipple’s line of work and his general love for vintage items, the friend thought the artwork would be of interest to him.
By the time Whipple arrived on the site, all the pieces had been disposed of into a dumpster (next stop: landfill) and were covered in debris and mold. Luckily, each was individually wrapped in plastic.
Curious, Whipple began to unwrap a few of the canvases to get a better look.
Four years of research to solve a mystery
Not only were they in good condition, but the quality of art was impeccable. Whipple immediately wanted to know more about the creator of these lovely works, but the answers didn’t come easy. In fact, the research ended up taking Whipple four years, but here’s what he found:
Who was Francis Hines?
The works were created by Francis Mattson Hines, and he wasn’t exactly a no name. According to the Mattatuck Museum, Hines’ big claim to fame was weaving giant pieces of diaphanous fabrics around the Washington Square Arch in geometric patterns back in 1980. Though his story was publicly recognized in books and documentaries, much of Hines’ fame had diminished by the time of his death in 2016, hence the less-than-fruitful Google search.
“Not only was this artist a ‘someone,’ but he was even more well known in the New York art world than we could ever have imagined,” said Whipple.
From dumpster to gallery walls
In 2022, Whipple collaborated with art gallery Hollis Taggart to give Hines’ work the proper respect and celebration it deserves. According to CT Insider, the gallery and Whipple set up a large exhibit in both Southport, Connecticut, and New York City that ran from May 5-June 11, 2022. Each one showcased 35 to 40 pieces, which were all available for sale.
And just how much did a Francis Hines piece go for? CT Insider also spoke with art curator and historian Peter Hastings Falk, who estimated that his drawings could go for $4,500, and wrapped paintings around $22,000. This makes the entire collection, comprised of hundreds of pieces, worth millions of dollars.
That’s right. What nearly went into a trash heap is now valued as a mega fortune.
Go ahead. Pick up your jaw from the floor and read that again.
Of course, selling the art isn’t Whipple’s main focus. In addition to keeping some pieces for himself that he fell in love with, Whipple aims to work with major galleries in New York to establish Francis Hines as “a significant artist of the 20th and 21st century.”
The mechanic-turned-art-dealer told CT Insider his new purpose “is to get Hines into the history books.”
Since the exhibitions have been over, images of the art pieces are now housed on Hollis Taggart’s website where viewers can check them out and even inquire about pieces that are still available.
This article originally appeared four years ago. It has been updated.
-
Former teacher gets brutally honest about the ‘denial’ some parents have about their kids’ education
“They’re more concerned about the optics…than about taking care of the child’s needs.”
Many kids are seriously struggling in school. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, an estimated 49% of public school students started off the 2022-2023 school year behind in at least one subject. More recent data shows some improvement, with that figure dropping to 44% for the 2023-24 school year, though millions of students remain behind.
While there are several factors contributing to this issue, including the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, underfunded schools, and a growing teacher shortage, many educators feel that one majorly overlooked factor is parental involvement, or the lack of it, in their child’s education.
A former teacher’s blunt take on parental denial
One former teacher bluntly stated that it was parents’ “denial” that’s to blame. Odion, who now works as a flight attendant, made her case in response to another teacher’s TikTok asking parents why they’re unaware that their children are underperforming for their grade level.
In the original video, user @qbthedon laments that his 7th grade students still perform at a 4th grade level, and, despite his efforts, those kids still move onto the next grade even though they’re not ready. The worst part is that the parents don’t seem to be aware that their kids are extremely behind.
One dad’s denial that stuck with her for years
This lack of awareness and engagement dates back further than the pandemic years, says Odion, who taught Pre-K and Kindergarten in 2013.
Case in point: parent-teacher conference nights, where virtually no parent would show up. Odion then recalled one father who did attend with his daughter, called Tia for the story, but would not believe that Tia did not know the full alphabet.
“In kindergarten, you have to at least know, I think it was 80% of the 52 letters, as in uppercase and lowercase, and you have to be able to identify at random. So, I’m telling the dad that she barely knows 10 letters. And he’s in denial. ‘Nah, you know, she knows her letters,’” Odion says.
She then acts out that night, using a makeshift flashcard like she did to test Tia.
“I literally said, ‘What letter is this?’” Odion says while holding up the letter “M.” “She said something that’s not it. Put another one down. ‘What letter is this?’ She don’t know it.”
Still, the dad insisted that Tia knew her letters. Eventually, he blamed Tia’s older brother, who, despite only being a sixth grader himself, was “supposed to teach her.”
“It is not up to a child in elementary school, or middle school, or really any of your older kids, as someone who’s an older child… It is not up to the kids to teach younger kids,” Odion says in the clip.
Using another example, Odion states that a fifth grader in her class was reading at a kindergarten level and could only process basic sentences like “I see you” and “I like to see.”
In this instance, the students should be held back in order to fully learn the year’s curriculum. But Odion argues that parents fight against it “because they are more concerned about the optics of a child being held back than actually taking care of the child’s needs.”
Why holding kids back is not a simple solution
While the research shows that holding kids back a grade does improve their academic performance by granting them more time, there are still significant pros and cons to consider. In other words, being held back might not be the best solution for every struggling child. The biggest point Odion seems to be trying to make is that in addition to teachers and administrators, parents need to be more proactive in their child’s education.
“Parents, y’all can’t be backseat drivers about your child’s learning. You have to help reinforce it at home. You put a kid in front of that phone or iPad whenever they come home, it better be on YouTube, and it better be learning about letters and sight words. You can’t tell me you can’t read to the kid. It takes 10 minutes to read to the kid. No one is that busy,” she concludes.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
-
Man lives on a cruise ship 300 days a year for the same cost as renting in Florida
He’s spending less while spending more and more time cruising.
Living permanently on a cruise ship seems like a dream of the uber-wealthy. You spend your days lounging on the deck by the pool or touring an exotic location. Nights are spent dancing in the nightclub or enjoying live entertainment. You no longer have to worry about traffic, cooking or laundry. Your life has become all-inclusive as long as you’re on board.
At Upworthy, we’ve shared the stories of a handful of people who’ve been able to spend their lives on a permanent cruise because they’ve figured out how to do so affordably. Or, at least, at about the same cost of living on land. Insider featured the fantastic story of Ryan Gutridge, who spends about 300 nights a year living on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas. He only leaves the ship for a few weeks a year during the holidays.
Gutridge works in IT as an engineer for a cloud solution provider and can do his full-time job right from the ship. “I do meetings in the morning and afternoons, but I can also go to lunch and socialize or meet people at the gym,” he tells Insider. “I’ve even met people that I stay in contact with and that have come back and cruised on this ship with me multiple times since.”
Gutridge says that living and working on a cruise ship has improved his mental health. “Working from home was isolating. I don’t have kids or pets, so it’s easy to become somewhat introverted, but cruising has really helped and made me a lot more social,” he says.
So, how does he afford life on a permanent vacation?
How does he afford to live on a cruise ship?
“I have a spreadsheet that automatically records all my expenses, which helps. I also set a budget every year,” he says. “This year, my base fare budget is about $30,000, and last year when I started really looking at the numbers and evaluating how much base fare I paid to be on a ship for 300 nights, I found it was almost neck-and-neck with what I paid for rent and trash service for an apartment in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.”
Currently, the average price for a one-bedroom apartment in Fort Lauderdale is around $2,245 a month, which would cost roughly $27,000 a year.
The secret to making it work long term
Gutridge believes that the key to living on the ship affordably is loyalty programs. He found he was spending less each year thanks to his loyalty status, even as he spent more time cruising.
“Now, because I cruise so often with Royal Caribbean, I’ve moved up in its loyalty program. My drinks and internet are free. If people are going to do something like what I do, I recommend trying different brands because they all offer something different. But once you commit to one, you should stick to it so you reach those loyalty levels,” he says.
When he’s not on the ship, he makes doctor and dentist appointments and spends time with his friends. Then, it’s back on the high seas, where he has a routine. Monday through Friday, he works, eats healthy, and goes to the gym. On the weekends he’ll let loose and have a few drinks.
If the ship arrives at a location he enjoys, he’ll take a PTO day from work and go sightseeing.
“I have a strong relationship with the crew on this ship,” he says. “It’s become a big family, and I don’t want to rebuild those relationships on another ship, I joke that I have 1,300 roommates.” Eventually, Gutridge wants to get rid of his apartment and sell his car, so his primary residence is a Royal Caribbean ship.
This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated.
-
Golden Retriever has the absolute sweetest reaction to toddler taking her first steps
Taco was SO excited that he and his best bud were going to get to play together.
Here at Upworthy, we often look for stories that will make you smile and warm your heart, and few things do that more quickly than a good doggo and an adorable kiddo. So when we ran across a ridiculously sweet story on The Dodo about a Golden Retriever and his little human sister, we simply had to share it. Taco (full name Taco Bell—seriously) is a good boy who had been lovingly waiting for his new baby sister, Vanora, to be able to play with him. And when the day finally came? Oh. My. Goodness.
Claudia Hughes is the proud mom of the furry pup and his squishy human sibling. She told The Dodo that Taco had been smitten with Vanora ever since she came home from the hospital. “When we would lay her down on the floor or our bed, Taco would just lay down next to her,” Hughes said. That’s one attentive pup. Pet parents know there’s nothing more comforting than your fur baby looking out for your human baby, and Taco has been the ideal gentle watchdog.
A dog who waited patiently for his playmate
Hughes told The Dodo that the pooch would even get up for late-night feedings. Now that’s just beyond sweet. It’s no wonder the pup was itching for his playmate to get big enough to actually play with, and his reaction to his doggy dreams coming true is pure joy. The video of 3-year-old Taco seeing his toddler sibling taking some of her first steps has amassed more than 2 million likes on TikTok. Finally his sister can run around with him! Finally he can teach her the fun of having a dog for a big brother! Finally he gets to play! At least, that’s what I think he was thinking from his excited reaction.
And how do we know dogs are excited? Well, they get the zoomies, and if you’ve never been able to witness the absolute unadulterated joy of the zoomies, just check out his reaction in the video. It’s like he’s silently screaming, “I’m so excited!!!”
According to Hughes, Taco first started getting excited when he saw Vanora take steps in her walker, and more so when he saw her pushing the walker. But his excitement went off the charts when she could actually take steps unassisted. Don’t worry though, he was sure to keep his distance so as not to knock her down. He’s such a good doggy brother.
Teaching kindness goes both ways
Hughes told The Dodo, “We have shown Vanora that we hug Taco, we pet him gently and we give him kisses on his head.” She went on to say, “But if we get mad at him, we don’t hit him.”
Such a good doggo. Photo credit: Canva It looks like both Taco and Vanora have learned important lessons in kindness. Since the video of Taco’s “Yay, she’s walking!” zoomies went viral, the two have continued to be best pals. Vanora has since perfected the art of throwing the ball for Taco to fetch, having practiced since she was barely able to walk.
A family dog can be a source of joyful companionship for all, but sometimes a special bond is formed between a child and a pup. It’s clear that Taco and Vanora have that bond, which hopefully both will enjoy for many more years. Golden Retrievers come by their friendly, fun-loving, gentle reputation honestly, and it’s just delightful to see that energy in action.
You can follow @_mostlyadorable_ and @tacothepolarpup on Instagram for more sweet photos and videos of Taco the good doggo and his family.
This article originally appeared four years ago. It has been updated.
Get stories worth sharing delivered to your inbox.
Advertisement
