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Toby is a short-haired terrier originally owned by William Skirmish. After Skirmish's death, he became the unintended companion of Peter Grant and resides at the Folly.

Like his namesake from 'Punch and Judy' he favorite food is sausages, however he also eats common dog food, cake, and raw meat.[1] Toby protected Peter when Molly briefly became unstable after performing haemomancy.[2]

Detection Dog[]

He possibly triggered the chain of events leading up to the Covent Garden riots by biting Brandon Coopertown on the nose. This encounter with magic and the malevolent spirit 'Mr Punch' seems to have given him a high sensitivity to vestigium.

The Yap Scale[]

Stronger vestigium elicits a stronger physical reaction from Toby, usually by increased barking or 'yaps'.[3] Toby's sensitivity to vestigium allowed Peter Grant to develop a scale for quantifying vestigia. Whilst the scale is primitive, validation experiments with Toby and various materials demonstrated his consistency as a detection dog.

  • One 'yap' is enough vestigia to be apparent when not being looked for.
  • The standard background of a central London pub is 0.2 yaps (or 200 milliyaps).[4]
  • Toby's experiments with Peter found plastic retained vestigia almost as well as stone.[1]

Assisting the Police[]

Toby accompanied Peter and Lesley when they were undercover at the Skygarden Estate.[1] In this capacity Toby acted as detection dog and provided needed civilian camouflage for Peter and Lesley's undercover investigation.

Used as a vestigia detection dog he tracked William Skirmish's murderer from the site of the death to the bus stop the perpetrator used on his way home. Toby has also assisted in tracking some supernatural creatures such as a 'green man' in the first kidnap of Anna Yakunina[5], and the Book of Cunning Device at the British Library.[6] He was used on the lead up to Operation Polygon where he was able detect the train that contained the ghost of Alice Bowman.[7] He also some homing instinct, returning unassisted to the Folly after Skygarden was demolished.[8]

References[]

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