The Royal Corgi is synonymous with the Queen’s reign. It is a well know fact Corgis are Her Majesty’s favorite breed, but how did this obsession begin? How many dogs has she had during her lifetime? What special handling do her Corgis receive? Keep reading to find all the answers and much more.
1 During her reign, Queen Elizabeth II owned a total of more than 30 corgis, all descended from her first corgi, Susan, who was given to her for her 18th birthday.
2 The royal corgis have their own personal butlers.
3 The Queen did not tolerate pranks against her dogs. One of the monarch’s footmen was demoted for spiking the dogs’ food with whiskey and gin as a practical joke.
4 After several incidents where Her Majesty’s dogs were attacked, non-corgis are banned at royal family holiday events.
5 During the holidays, each corgi gets their own Christmas stockings, which the Queen fills with non-squeak toys and treats.
6 The Queen was once seriously injured because of her corgis. In 1991, she was bitten when eight of her Corgis got into a fight with two of the Queen Mother’s pets on Windsor Castle grounds. The Queen received a severe cut to her hand that needed three stitches.
7 Royal family pets are buried in a special graveyard, Located at her country home Sandringham. Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth’s great-great-grandmother, started this graveyard for her pet collie, Noble, when it died in 1887.
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8 Before owning her own Corgi, Susan, the family had a Corgi called Dookie. At seven years old, Her Majesty selected him from a litter of three pups, supposedly because of his longer tail – “So that we can see whether he’s pleased or not”.
9 The largest number of corgis The Queen owned at the same time was 13, in the early 1980s.
10 Princess Diana once called them a “moving carpet” always by her mother-in-law’s side.
11 The Queen and her sister, Margaret, invented the Dorgi when they crossed Tiny the Corgi with Margaret’s Dachshund Pipkin.
12 The Corgis have been known to photobomb official photo shoots at the palace!
13 The Queen adored her first Corgi, Susan, and took her along on the Royal Honeymoon with Prince Philip in 1947!
14 The Queen reportedly has a magnet she carries when she’s being fitted for a dress to pick up pins to prevent the corgis from pricking their paws.
15 The corgis had their own compartment on the royal train and were known to fly with the queen in her private plane. Here, staff members unload the corgis from the royal plane. Bob Shields, a former navigator for the Queen’s flight, said that her dogs were well trained and never had accidents on board.
16 According to reports, the Corgis are fed at exactly 5 pm each evening. They consume fresh food that is specifically prepared for them in the royal kitchen. It is rumored that their diet mostly consists of fillet steak, rabbit, salmon, chicken, and rice.
17 The Queen Mother started the tradition of Royal Corgis sleeping on raised wicker beds with fresh sheets daily in their own room inside the palace.
18 Her dogs met James Bond. For the 2012 Olympics, the Queen and two of her corgis participated in a sketch with James Bond actor Daniel Craig. The dogs accompanied the Queen and Bond down Buckingham Palace’s hallways, even getting to show off their tricks like “roll over.”
19 The dogs’ reputations weren’t always stellar. Some of the Queen’s corgis were notorious for attacking other canines and, in certain cases, even biting people. Royal staff had to be on their guard around the dogs to avoid getting nipped.
20 Not everyone in the palace is fond of them. Paul Burrell, who was at one time the Queen’s personal footman, was reported to have been knocked unconscious when he became tangled up among nine leashed Corgis. Afterward, he said, “They’re yappy, snappy, and we bloody well hate them.”
21 It was uncommon to see the Queen without a dog by her side. Indeed, in nearly every photograph of the Queen at home, there is a dog (or two!) at her feet. She was never too far away from her devoted pets.
22 The Corgis loved Meghan Markle. In a 2017 interview, Prince Harry joked that he’d “spent the last 33 years being barked at” by the dogs only for them to instantly warm up to Meghan Markle. “The corgis took to you straight away,” he said. “That’s true,” Markle agreed. “Just laying on my feet during tea, it was very sweet.”
23 Her Majesty stopped breeding Corgis in 2015. It was reported that the Queen put an end to her corgi breeding practice. At the time, she was 89 years old and feared that any new dogs born would outlive her. She couldn’t bear to leave any of her precious pups behind, so she ceased breeding altogether.
24 The Queen saved the entire breed. Once a breed in danger of disappearing, the worldwide renewed interest in the royal family is credited with helping increase Pembroke Welsh Corgi registrations by 54 percent since 2015.
Did any of these facts surprise you? Do you have the scoop on any other Royal Corgi knowledge? Let us know in the comments!
Featured image credit: Photo by Sanjay Suchak, UVA Communications
