"All The
Queen's Corgis: Corgis, dorgis and gundogs: The story of Elizabeth II and her
most faithful companions" by Penny Junor
One's best
friends: Penny Junor on the Queen's passion for pooches and the end of a doggy
dynasty
By PENNY
JUNOR
PUBLISHED:
00:01 GMT, 28 October 2018 | UPDATED: 00:01 GMT, 28 October 2018
Until
recently, Her Majesty’s corps of corgi companions accompanied her everywhere.
With the passing of the last in line earlier this year, their royal reign is at
an end. Penny Junor looks back on the doggy dynasty
I have just
one dog. The Queen has had up to ten at times. My admiration for her as a dog
handler knows no bounds, but even the best-trained dogs can misbehave – and our
sovereign has had disasters and heartbreak alongside the friendship and fun.
Through her
dogs I have discovered an aspect of the Queen that, despite more than 30 years
of royal writing, I have never seen before. Off duty, she puts on comfortable
clothes and immerses herself in the countryside that she loves, with her dogs
and horses. This is when she is at her happiest. Dogs and horses are her
passion and it is with them, and the people who share that passion, that she
truly relaxes.
The Queen
arrives at Aberdeen airport with a few of her pack, 1974. Dogs and horses are
the Queen's passion and it is with them that she truly relaxes
When
historians look back over her reign they will marvel at her loyalty to a single
breed. Before the death of her last Pembroke Welsh corgi in April (she still
has two mixed-breed corgis), she had not been without the companionship of
these little dogs since the age of seven. Over the years they had travelled
with her by car, boat, helicopter, plane and train; they had sat with her for
photographs and portraits; announced her arrival in any roomful of people, and
helped countless guests to relax. The Queen also used the dogs to ease her own
discomfort. Her family refers to it as the ‘dog mechanism’; if there is an
awkward lull she will turn her attention to the dogs to fill the silence or
bend down to give them titbits from her plate at table. If the situation
becomes too difficult she will sometimes walk away and take the dogs out.
The Queen will fill awkward lulls by turning
her attention to the do gs. Her family calls it the Dog Mechanism
On Princess
Elizabeth’s 18th birthday her father gave her a corgi of her own – Susan. Every
corgi that the Queen has had can be traced back to this dog. After her marriage
to Prince Philip in 1947, what the waving crowds couldn’t see, as the couple
headed off for their honeymoon, was that Susan was snuggled up in the carriage
beside the Queen. The Duke of Edinburgh has been vying with the dogs for his
wife’s attention ever since.
Princess
Margaret never had as many dogs as her sister and mother, but perhaps the most
famous one was a dachshund called Pipkin. Despite being vertically challenged,
he was not put off by taller females: one day in the late 1960s, he and the
Queen’s corgi Tiny had an illicit moment together behind the shrubbery and a
new crossbreed – the dorgi – was born. The Queen and her sister were so pleased
with the outcome that they deliberately mated Pipkin again. The Queen was not
intent on creating a new breed; she and her sister regarded the dorgis as a bit
of fun and they were such friendly little dogs they kept on doing it. When
royal photographer Norman Parkinson asked the Queen how the corgis and
dachshunds were able to mate, given their different heights, she replied, ‘It’s
very simple. We have a little brick.’
Ten-year-old
Princess Elizabeth hugs the family corgi, 1936. It is her love of dogs as much
as anything else that enables so many of us to feel we have a special
connection with the Queen
Pampered
though her dogs may have been, the Queen was nothing if not practical; their
bowls were a motley collection of metal and porcelain. They did, however, eat
very well, with diets tailored to their individual needs. In the country the
dogs ate rabbit shot on the estates; otherwise it was a variety of fresh,
cooked meat, vegetables and rice prepared for them in the royal kitchens,
topped with a little biscuit, homeopathic and herbal remedies when required and
a special gravy that, legend has it, was the Queen’s own recipe.
Whenever
possible she fed them herself and it was an afternoon ritual; but not an
unruly, frantic free-for-all. A footman brought the food and the bowls on a
silver tray and laid out a plastic sheet to protect the carpet. The Queen then
sat them in a semicircle around her and did the rest.
Roger Mugford,
the animal psychologist who was brought in after some dramatic dog fights,
watched her do this and was impressed. ‘The Queen looked across to the
semicircle of quiet but salivating dogs congregated a few metres away and
called each one in turn to take his or her food. There was never a growl or a
rude look between the dogs. She explained that she had always been strict in
requiring good manners at feeding time and each was obliged to wait his turn –
the eldest to be fed first, the youngest last.’
The Queen Mother’s corgis were frequent
flyers. Princess Margaret never had as many dogs as her sister and mother, but
perhaps the most famous one was a dachshund called Pipkin
They did it
for the Queen because they were her dogs and she was their pack leader. But
they had a habit of being deaf to the commands of anyone else, and feeding time
was not always so calm. When she was away it would fall to a duty footman to
feed the corgis and it is said that one, who was bitten during the food frenzy,
took revenge by lacing the dog’s dinner with gin. The Queen was unamused when
she found out and, although the man managed to hold on to his job at the
palace, he was demoted and – to his joy – never again permitted to tend the
dogs.
The corgis
would get treats from the Queen’s plate at mealtimes. They clustered around the
table, even when she had guests, and attended all the best parties. Although
they were not invited to state banquets, I’m sure the Queen sometimes wished
they were, for they helped put visitors, who could be tongue-tied on meeting
the sovereign, at ease.
One such
person is David Nott, a surgeon who works for ten months of the year in major
London hospitals and volunteers his expertise for two months in the world’s
most dangerous war zones. The day he went to lunch with the Queen he had just
come back from Aleppo, centre of the fiercest fighting in the Syrian civil war.
It was October 2014 and he had been back in the UK for only ten days; it
usually takes him three months to readjust. When the Queen turned to talk to
him he couldn’t speak.
‘I was
thinking about the day when seven children from one family were brought into
the hospital,’ Nott recalled. ‘I could feel my bottom lip quivering. All I
could do was stare long and hard at the wall. She realised something was
terribly wrong and asked if I’d like to see the dogs. A courtier appeared with
the corgis, and a silver tin of dog biscuits was brought to the table. “Why
don’t we feed the dogs?” she said, and we stroked and fed them for about half
an hour as she told me all about them. The humanity of that was unbelievable. She
wasn’t the Queen any more but this lovely person with a human face.’
The Queen
has five regular residences, and corgis were a familiar sight in all of them,
but none more than Buckingham Palace where they slept inside her private
apartment. There was a special corgi room where they had raised wicker baskets
lined with cushions. Schedule permitting, she still walks her dorgis, Vulcan
and Candy, daily – and a corgi called Whisper she took in last year after the
death of his owner, a former Sandringham gamekeeper. Even now, once they are
safely in the country she will drive them around the estate. There are fewer
dogs and they are older and more sedate these days, but at one time there were
up to ten scrambling over the seats barking furiously at everything they
passed.
The Queen
at Balmoral estate in 1971. Strip away the wealth, the privilege and the
palaces, and the bond she has with her dogs is no different from the one the
rest of us have with ours
As Lady
Pamela Hicks said, ‘The Queen is very private. She longs to be in a room with
nobody else. She has few friends and if she had to choose between the dogs, the
horses and the friends, there is no doubt which she would choose.’ One of her
prime ministers, surrounded by the dogs at his weekly audience, asked her how
she could tell the difference between them. ‘Do you get your children
confused?’ was the clipped response.
According
to former headkeeper Bill Meldrum everyone at Sandringham knows immediately
when the Queen arrives because the gundogs alert them. ‘They start barking the
moment her car reaches the gate – it’s a good 500 yards from the house. We have
no idea how they can tell and they don’t do that with anyone else.’
Susan, the
Queen’s first corgi, lived to be almost 15. Willow, the 14th generation of
Susan’s descendants and the last of the Queen’s corgis, died in April this
year.
It is her
love of dogs as much as anything else that enables so many of us to feel we
have a special connection with the Queen. Strip away the wealth, the privilege
and the palaces, and the bond she has with her dogs is no different from the
one the rest of us have with ours, no matter what our station in life.
One's best
friends: Penny Junor on the Queen's passion for pooches and the end of a doggy
dynasty
By PENNY
JUNOR
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