The Enid Blyton Society

Timmy seemed to be a Berger Picard in the Eileen Soper illustrations, imo.

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While appearance wise it fits the description, I highly doubt Timmy could have been one of those. The breed is extremely rare, even in its native country of France it's rare as they were almost made extinct in the first and second world war and are only just starting to recover in very small numbers. Their like hen's teeth over here, they've only been acknowledged and registered on the breed import list since 2014. That the dog Enid took her inspiration for Timmy from could be a virtually non existent breed from another country and has never been known or seen in Britain until two years ago is pretty much impossible. It could certainly have been a mongrel that resembled such a breed, but not the breed itself. That's as likely as Jack finding his extinct great auk on the Isle of gloom .

I couldn't agree more with you, IceMaiden. The Timmy that Enid Blyton described in the FF books certainly is not the one illustrated by Eileen Soper.

Timmy is described as a large, brown mongrel - I've always imagined him as a Labrador/Alsatian cross. The Alsatian genes would make him such a good guard dog and protector of the children, but he's also got the gentle nature of the Labrador. The dogs used in the film and TV series' never seemed a good fit for Timmy. None were big enough, nor frightening enough to scare off the villains!

That's not completely true - there are two Danish Famous Five films (go adventuring again/get into trouble) of the late sixties/early seventies, in which an Alsatian was used for Timmy.

Wolfgang wrote:That's not completely true - there are two Danish Famous Five films (go adventuring again/get into trouble) of the late sixties/early seventies, in which an Alsatian was used for Timmy.

Ah right, I haven't seen those! It definitely makes sense, having a bigger, more fierce-looking dog playing the role of Timmy

aha... a dog breed topic was what I will posted here, as I always picture Enid Blyton adventures as a bunch of teenage with dog sniffing for some mystery.

btw, another dog that hardly anyone remember : Bingo , Ern Goon's dog. From Wikipedia :

Bingo – (Ern's dog). Ern Goon's new dog Bingo makes an appearance in the last book, The Mystery of the Banshee Towers. Bingo is described as having a huge tail that "waves instead of wag" but small legs to match it. Like Fatty and Buster, Ern and Bingo simply adore each other a lot.