“It was Toto who made Dorothy laugh and saved her from growing as grey as her surroundings,” wrote Baum in the original version of the story. Toto is the driving force behind Frank Baum’s narrative because it is Dorothy’s love for the dog that leads her to run away and escape the dreary moral landscape of Kansas and its arbiter, Miss Gulch. Toto plays a central role in several critical points: he runs away at the beginning and end of the book and Dorothy changes plans to catch him he pulls away the curtain to reveal the Wizard is a fake. In subsequent books he becomes a Boston Terrier for reasons that are never explained, but then resumes the earlier look in later books. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum did not specifically state Toto's breed, but wrote 'he was a little black dog with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose.' However, from the illustrations in the first book many have concluded that he is a Cairn Terrier while others believe he is a Yorkshire Terrier as this breed was very popular at the time and it fits the illustration quite well. Other major appearances include The Road to Oz, The Emerald City of Oz, Grampa in Oz and The Magical Mimics in Oz, in which he is the first to recognize the Mimics. In The Lost Princess of Oz, he often talks continuously.

In Tik-Tok of Oz, continuity is restored: he reveals that he is able to talk, just like other animals in the Land of Oz, and simply chooses not to. In subsequent books, other animals gained the ability to speak upon reaching Oz or similar lands, but he remained speechless. In the first book, he never spoke, although other animals, native to Oz, did. Toto belongs to Dorothy Gale, the heroine of the first and many subsequent books.

I Toto by Willard Carroll