The poignant reason the Queen refuses to have any more corgis
THE red-letter day has been in the diary for months, if not years, a date which represents such an extraordinary milestone in our island story. On September 9, the Queen becomes thee longest-reigning monarch in British history, the e day on which she breaks the record held for more than a century by her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria.
But while the nation may hope to mark this singular achievement, it is not a day off celebration at Buckingham Palace, which feels itt would be unseemly to the memory of Victoria.
For the Queen the summer of 2015 has held other, more personal memories. The arrival of her childhood pet corgi, Susan, all thosee summers ago, and, poignantly, the 12th anniver- sary this month of the last litter of House off Windsor corgi puppies.
Since 1945, the Queen has had 30 corgis, a good proportion of them direct descendants off Susan, from whom the then Princess Elizabeth h was inseparable.
In 1947, hidden under blankets in the royall carriage, Susan was whisked away with thee newlywed Elizabeth as she left with Princee Philip for their honeymoon.
The following year, when the princess gavee birth to her first baby, Charles, newspaper columns were full of advice on how Elizabeth could prevent Susan from becoming jealous of the infant prince.
A year later, Susan followed her royal mistress into motherhood, producing a pair of puppies: Sugar, who belonged to Prince Charles, and Honey who, in later years, lived with the Queen Mother. It marked the beginning of a new royal dynasty.
At one stage there were said to be 13 corgis — memorably described by Princess Diana as a ‘ moving carpet’ — lolling in the Queen’s private sitting room and nipping the heels of footmen, prime ministers, ladies-in-waiting and diplomats.
Every few years, a fresh litter arrived and older dogs passed on. But the Queen’s current corgis, Holly and Willow, now entering the doggie twilight world, will be the last in the line, together with her pair of dorgis — corgi-dachshund crosses Candy and Vulcan.
It emerged six years ago that the Queen had stopped breeding Pembroke Welsh corgis. Courtiers said that she worried about lively young dogs around her feet and the danger she might trip over one and hurt herself.
But what was not clear was that she also no longer wanted any new four-legged companions to replace those that died.
Corgis have an average lifespan of 12 to 13 years, though some can reach 18. This month, Holly and Willow turned 12, while their mistress is 89.
Now Monty Roberts, the Californian cowboy who inspired the Hollywood film The Horse Whisperer, has disclosed what many have suspected: the Queen does not wish to leave any of her beloved pets behind when she dies.
Inevitably, perhaps, it has taken a plain- speaking American to give this first intimation of the Queen’s sense of her own mortality.
WHIlE neither blunt nor disrespectful, 80-year-old Roberts (after whom the Queen named Monty, the corgi that appeared in the 007 film clip she made with actor Daniel Craig for the london Olympics) has been an informal adviser to the Queen on her horses and her dogs for more than a quarter of a century.
In an interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Roberts says that when Monty died in 2012, he offered to find her a replacement puppy.
‘I said: “I want you to tell me the best breeder of corgis that you revere. Who’s doing the best job? Because I want a puppy to be named Monty, to be a replacement.”
‘But she didn’t want to have any more young dogs. She didn’t want to leave any young dog behind. I understood we would discuss it further at a later date.
‘Well, we never did, and I have no right to try to force her into continuing to bring on young puppies if she doesn’t want to.’
But for now, life for Holly, Willow, Candy and Vulcan will continue as usual. Each day starts with a brisk walk with a footman in the Buckingham Palace gardens. These days, because of their size and age, the pack is relatively easy to handle.
The period when former royal butler Paul Burrell, then a Palace page, was knocked unconscious when nine leashed corgis pulled him over on the steps of Sandringham House are long past.
Often the dogs are taken to the Queen’s private sitting room when she is having breakfast and clamour for scraps, slices of toast and mar- malade, fed to them from the table.
Whenever possible, the Queen feeds the corgis herself — there is a menu in the Palace kitchen — and it can include steak, poached chicken, liver and rabbit.
She also likes to take them on a daily constitutional which also serves as a kind of meditation. Prince Philip has referred to this as his wife’s ‘dog mechanism’ therapy.
No world figure has been as identified with a particular animal as the Queen has with her corgis.
Over the years they have brought a warmth to her public image, being photographed at her side receiving statesmen in formal situations, or on a tartan picnic rug with the Royal Family at Balmoral, or being bundled up the steps on to a royal flight.
In a life governed by protocol, they are also a simple way to break the ice with strangers. Although woe betide those who try to curb the snuffling of the dogs at their feet. Dog discipline is the Queen’s domain alone. Staff have lost count of the number of servants whose doggy duties include being armed with blotting paper to mop up accidents and soda syphons to squirt dogs off ankles, and visitors bitten by corgis.
It all started with the royal clock-winder leonard Hubbard, who in 1954 was left with an inch-long gash to his leg. Shortly afterwards, Grenadier Guardsman Alfred Edge had to be treated in hospital after his wound went septic, while one policeman had his trousers ripped and a chunk taken out of his knee.
Some got off lightly. Artist Howard Morgan told me how, while painting the Queen Mother, his foot accidentally collided with one corgi — pro- pelling the creature through their air like a furry rugby ball.
Fortunately, the Queen Mother was perfectly relaxed and the corgis gave him a wide berth for each subsequent sitting.
When there were no human diversions, the dogs have been known to fight among themselves, sometimes fatally.
In 1989, one dog called Ranger led a group of corgis that killed Chipper, the Queen’s favourite dorgi. And in the early 1990s, when the Queen’s family was riven by divorce and separation, her dog family was at each other’s throats, too.
When the Queen intervened in a fight between her dogs and those of the Queen Mother, she was left needing three stitches to a bite on her hand.
For the Queen, though, her dogs have been a refuge from what has often been an isolating position, as well as providing her with an unending source of love and affection. ‘My corgis are family,’ she once said.
This love affair began more than eight decades ago when the Queen, then Princess Elizabeth of York, played in Hyde Park with a corgi belonging to Viscount Weymouth, a future Marquess of Bath.
ElIzABETH was enamoured, and started clamouring for one of her own. Three were delivered to the Yorks’ london home, 145 Piccadilly, and Dookie — a corgi with a deep chestnut red coat and stump of a tail — was chosen.
By the time her father became King, another corgi, Jane, had joined the menagerie. But it was the arrival of Susan, an 18th birthday present, that was to secure Elizabeth’s corgi line.
When Susan died at Sandringham in 1959, the Queen wrote to her estate manager with precise instructions for the burial in the pet cemetery there, which was created by Victoria.
She drew a sketch of the headstone and the inscription. After the dates of birth and death, it was to say: ‘For almost 15 years the faithful companion of the Queen.’
Over the years, her grandchildren helped in the naming of new puppies, but if she hoped it would encourage the next generation to share her love for corgis, she was disappointed. It is possibly for this reason she does not wish any of her pets to outlive her.
Just why the Queen has shared so much of her life with corgis is her own secret. Some have suggested it is the breed’s untamed characteristics as much as its elements of domesticity.
Perhaps the key is in their unruliness and the contrast with the well-oiled and often highly formal life she has to lead.
In that sense, her fierce loyalty towards them could be seen as something of a rebellion against stiff convention. Whatever the reasons, when her reign ends, it will certainly mark the end of a very special friendship.