you will never have as many as Elizabeth II

UK – This is a small, short-legged dog with pointy ears and a long back, named after the Celtic “Corgi”meaning “dwarf dog”. The corgi was the favorite dog of Queen Elizabeth II, who died on Thursday September 8 at the age of 96.

In all, more than 30 corgis have sat with her on the throne. From Susan, received for her 18th birthday, to Fergus and Muick, acquired shortly before the death of her husband Philip, Elizabeth II and her little dogs have remained inseparable. An animal so linked to the monarch that when she made a video alongside James Bond – played by Daniel Craig – on the occasion of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, her four-legged companions were in the cast.

Several have also been immortalized alongside the sovereign in official photos or paintings. Following news of Elizabeth II’s death, acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz chose to repost a photo of the Queen she took in 2016 for the magazine Vanity Fair, at Windsor Castle with his animals.

” The Queen went out to walk her dogs every day… She grew up surrounded by corgis, brave little dogs normally trained to guard the herds. Her dad brought her one home when she was seven, and she never stopped having one – for decades.”recalls the photographer.

From corgi to dorgi

Young Elizabeth discovered this breed of dog at a very young age, when her father King George VI introduced Dookie to the family in 1933. This was the start of a long passion for the Queen, who raised several generations of corgis , with a clear preference for the Pembroke breed.

She also created the “dorgi”crossing one of his corgis with his sister Margaret’s dachshund, as the Guardian. This hybrid breed is not recognized by major international canine authorities, but the Queen has owned two, Vulcan and Candy.

All these dogs have also regularly aroused the passion of many Britons. “In 1944, when Susan, the Queen’s very first Pembroke Corgi, was born, the breed’s popularity jumped 56%. The numbers have steadily climbed. Pembroke corgis hit their peak in 1960, seven years after the Queen’s coronation when nearly 9,000 puppies were registered. After this heyday, the popularity of the breed plummeted”traces the Kennel Club, the largest British organization devoted to the health and training of dogs.

But Netflix also came to the rescue of corgis by representing them alongside Elizabeth II in the hit series “The Crown”, which retraces her reign. They then became trendy again in Great Britain. Between the airing of the first season of the series in 2017 and 2020, registrations of Pembroke corgi puppies almost doubled according to the Kennel Club, which in 2018 was able to remove it from the list of breeds in danger of extinction.

See also on The HuffPost: Tributes to Elizabeth II outside the British Embassy in Paris