Tobi – a 15-year-old silky terrier with scruffy brown hair and long whiskers — walked happily alongside his owner and best friend, Andrea Cáceres in New York City one day this past August.
He didn't flinch when traffic sounds from the nearby street spilled into the neighborhood park, or when an ambulance with blaring sirens whizzed by.
"He's a real New Yorker," Cáceres laughed.
But the little dog wasn't always so familiar with the big city. Cáceres' new children's book, Hello, Tobi! is a celebration of Tobi's walks in the parks when he first arrived in New York.
Tobi was born in Valencia, Venezuela. Back then, Cáceres was planning to become a civil engineer. "While I was studying, I started illustrating," she said. "And I started illustrating Tobi."
Without ever taking a single art class, Cáceres graduated with an engineering degree — but she pursued work as an artist. In 2016, as Venezuela's socioeconomic crisis deepened, Caceres moved to the United States and found a position as a textile designer.
"When I moved here, I was working designing for other people. I wasn't doing anything for myself," she said. "I didn't have time to do anything for myself."
Worst of all, she had to leave Tobi back in Venezuela. She missed him immensely, and she craved a creative outlet to help her through all the transitions she was going through. So she started a project: Every day, for a whole year, she would draw a different dog. She called the project "A Dog A Day Keeps the Stress Away," and the first dog she drew in January 2018 was, of course, Tobi.
The illustrations took off. Soon, Cáceres started getting commissioned to draw people's pets and paint murals for cafes and vet clinics. Best of all, after more than two years apart, she saved enough to bring Tobi to New York. His original flight from Venezuela got cancelled – Tobi had to fly from Valencia to Caracas to Panama to Miami and then – finally – to New York City, where Cáceres was waiting for him.
"The moment he saw me, he started crying," she recalled. "Then I started crying, and everybody started crying."
Hello,Tobi! is a portrait of this period when she first introduced Tobi to Harlem. Today, they live in Brooklyn.
"It's a very diverse neighborhood. You see people from everywhere," said Cáceres. "You meet New Yorkers, you meet immigrants. And a lot of people speak Spanish, which is Tobi's first language."
In the book, Tobi encounters all kinds of families on his walk: tall families, short families. There are families that are quiet and others that like to talk or sing together. Some families look alike, and some families look different from one another. They all say hello to Tobi. Cáceres said it's a simple idea, but for her, it's deeply personal.
"I really tried to reflect what I lived. I felt at home when I moved to the U.S. because somehow everybody's different. You're not like anybody else, but you do feel like you belong because of that," she explained. "I wanted to showcase that that was possible — everybody gets to live together and enjoy community together even when they're all different."
In real life and in the story, Tobi greets all the different people at the park – but he has a clear favorite: his own family.
"He loves me no matter what," Cáceres said as she rubbed his belly. "And I just always love him back."
And with that, Tobi and Andrea Cáceres walked back home.
Meghan Sullivan edited the digital and broadcast versions of this story.
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