Quote:
Originally Posted by ourfirstyorkie  So, I just happened to be reading chapter 18 of Yorkshire Terriers for Dummies and there is a section titled "Toto Was a Yorkie (Maybe)"
So I thought I would share it:
"Some folks claim that the character Toto in L.Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a Yorkie. According to Frank, Toto was 'a little black dog, with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose.'
This description, you have to admit, can apply to several breeds of dogs. But the Wizard of Oz's original illustrator, W.W.Denslow, owned a Yorkie and very well may have used his dog as a model for the illustrations in the book. So Toto may or may not be a Yorkie. But he definitely wasn't a Cairn Terrier, which is the type of dog cast in the 1939 movie version." |
Thanks for this bit of trivia, which can also be readily found on the net... I would postulate that for about 99% of the people who make that tired old comment (and I have heard that dozens of times over the years), they are comparing our Yorkies to the Carin Terrier in the movie. So I always shoot back that Toto was a Carin, but maybe they are wiser than I suspect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toto_(Oz)