E. H. Shepard’s son’s teddy bear was named Growler.
This detail helps explain a common mix-up about Pooh’s visual origin. A. A. Milne based the character and stories on Christopher Robin Milne’s teddy bear and other toys, but Shepard did not simply copy Christopher’s toy when drawing Pooh.
Shepard instead used his own son’s teddy bear, Growler, as the model for the illustrations. The result was the familiar slim, expressive bear seen in the original books. Disney later developed a different visual identity for Pooh, including the character’s famous red shirt.
Growler is not one of the characters in Milne’s stories, and the name is not another nickname for Pooh. It belongs to the real toy used by Shepard as an artistic reference. This distinction separates the literary inspiration from the illustrator’s physical model.