In 1956, Mom took me to the Fair Oaks Theater—just a short walk from where me and my family live today—to see a romantic comedy, Toy Tiger, starring Jeff Chandler.

Chandler was not your romantic comedy kind of guy. Usually he was a Marine officer leading his rifle platoon onto a Central Pacific beach, or a lawman protecting a frontier town from evil gunslingers or an Apache chieftain. He was an awesome Apache chieftain.

But the Toy Tiger in the film was an early experiment in Hollywood merchandising. I don’t think the Scarlett O’Hara whalebone corsets went over so well. I fell for this one. Hard. I think he came into my life at Christmas.

That’s the original Toy Tiger in the film still above and this is mine, sixty-seven years later. He’s blind and faded and some of his stuffing is starting to come out, but he’s always within reach, just above my computer. I needed him when I was four.

Walter fills a similar need today. Sometimes in the middle of the night I will feel a very cold Basset Hound nose pressing into the nape of my neck. It’s Walter sniffing to make sure I’m still there. I’ll turn over and gather him next to me and then we go back to sleep.

Walter doesn’t know this—-wait, maybe he does—but he makes me feel just as safe at seventy-one as Toy Tiger did when I was four. 

You can’t ask for better friends than these.