Where Queen Elizabeth’s beloved dogs and horses will go after her death
They were her most faithful friends to the very end.
As one of the UK’s most famous animal lovers, Queen Elizabeth’s relationship with her Corgis was probably her least complicated. She loved them and they loved her. Now, after her death Thursday at age 96, there is a question over who will look after her four dogs.
The queen’s adoration of animals never ended. In 2018, when her dog Whisper died, it was rumored that she was not going to get any new dogs — she was reported telling horse trainer friend Monty Roberts that “she didn’t want to leave any young dog behind.”
But in 2021, in the midst of the pandemic and when it was clear that her beloved husband, Prince Philip, was terminally unwell, she bought two new puppies to keep her company: Corgi Muick (named after her favorite Scottish lake) and Dorgi Fergus (named after her war hero uncle Fergus Bowes-Lyon).
A Dorgi is a mix between a Corgi and a daschund, and the monarch has had several — including a surviving older one called Candy — starting when one of her Corgis and her sister Princess Margaret’s dachshund mated.
Fergus, sadly, died but, a few months later, the queen was given a Cocker Spaniel puppy by her son Prince Andrew, on what would have been Philip’s 100th birthday. The prize-winning dog is named Lissy after her owner.
The queen’s love of Corgis started from the age of 7, when a family friend showed her one. At 18 she was given her first Corgi, Susan, who Her Majesty loved so much that she even smuggled the dog beneath a rug in the royal carriage for her honeymoon in 1947.
Over the next six decades she would own more than 30 of Susan’s descendants and gift others to family and friends. Until it became too difficult for her, Queen Elizabeth walked them twice a day and the dogs even had their own room at Buckingham Palace — “The Corgi room,” where they were looked after by two footmen called “Doggie 1” and “Doggie 2.”
“The entire family are dog lovers and so any one of them could take a dog or two,” royal author Claudia Joseph told The Post. “Andrew has Cocker Spaniels so he might take back the one he gave her. William and Kate also love dogs so they could have them. Or there is a chance they will continue to be looked after by the palace staff so that they don’t need to be moved.”
It is not just her dogs which the queen leaves behind in the animal world, but more than 100 horses — including two she was given on the occasion of her platinum jubilee: one from French President Emmanuel Macron and a second from the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev.
Queen Elizabeth inherited an interest in thoroughbred breeding and racing stock from her late father, King George VI, and is believe to have earned around $9 million in prize money over the years. There are stables at each of her royal residences.
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She kept close tabs on all of her horses, while her favorite reading was the daily Racing Post.
“It is likely that the queen’s daughter, Princess Anne, and [Anne’s] daughter, Zara, who were both Olympic equestrians and well-known horse lovers, are likely to be involved in what happens next to the queen’s animals,” Joseph said.
