Military nicknames are, I am told, not terribly flattering. They usually stem from inside jokes or embarrassing incidents. Here's how Tod got his.
He seems to embellish more and more details each time he tells the tale, but it usually unfolds like this. He's hanging out with some other recruits after hours. While many of them are moonies like himself, some are from cosmopolitan urban centers on Welkinstead proper. These city folk have tasted the many and varied delights and temptations that have taken root on Welkinstead from around Focus, and they have a mind to corrupt their more rural brothers in arms.
One of these more worldly recruits shows up with a heaping bowl of wind fruit. Tod, innocent of the fruit's intoxicating properties, devours nearly the entire bowl. Keep in mind that a single fruit is enough to get a yinrih drunk. Tod staggers outside, three sheets to the wind, and promptly does the technicolor yawn several times, painting the pavement with the contents of his gut. Then he stumbles through the puddle of his own sick, covering all four paws with his own vomit.
His fellow soldiers call him “Puke Paws” from that day forward. One would think he'd be embarrassed by it, but he wears it with pride since it has nothing to do with his red coat or black ears.