When you talk about royal pets, you�re talking about royal dogs.  The British royal family are at least as interested in horses as in dogs, but frankly, I don�t know much about horses, and would rather not get emails enumerating my mistakes on the subject.  The royal family have a general lack of interest in other pets, including the many exotic animals that have been presented to them and passed on to zoos or other homes.  In particular, they all dislike cats, or at least they all go along with a royal tradition of disliking cats that seems to go back for generations.  Perhaps this is because cats are the least deferential of animals.  The one exception to this is Princess Michael of Kent, who has always had cats, one of the many small differences between her and the rest of the royal family. 

To return to the royal dogs, the Queen loves her dogs on a royal scale.  The �Kids� Zone� section of the royal web site (www.royal.gov.uk) reveals that she currently has fourteen dogs.  Only half of them are corgis, the breed commonly associated with the Queen.  The current corgis are named Emma, Linnet, Rush, Minnie, Monty, Willow and Holly.  Welsh corgis were little known when the Duke and Duchess of York bought their first one, Dookie, in 1933.  Princess Elizabeth received a corgi named Susan for her eighteenth birthday, and her later corgis have nearly all been Susan�s descendants. 

Many people have commented that the Queen gives her dogs the love and affection that she seems incapable of giving to people, and particularly her children.  They are certainly far more physically present in her life than her children ever were � even when they were small, they were in the nursery while the dogs were by Elizabeth�s side.  Like her children, her dogs are cared for by staff most of the time, allowing the Queen to have several indoor dogs without feeling the burden of caring for them.  Taking the yipping pack out into bad weather seems to be one of the low points of royal service.  Paul Burrell was once knocked out cold after the corgis pulled him across the icy steps at Sandringham. 

The Queen Mother continued to have corgis for the rest of her life, though she owned fewer than the Queen.  Her corgis often fought with the Queen�s corgis, and her dog Ranger killed one of the Queen�s corgis, Chipper.  However, the corgis she owned at the time of her death were adopted by the Queen.  Princess Margaret also had dogs, including a dachshund named Pipkin.  Pipkin mated with some of the Queen�s corgis, resulting in a cross-breed that was dubbed the �dorgi.�  The Queen currently has two dorgis, Cider and Berry. 

The online list says that the Queen also has five cocker spaniels named Bisto, Oxo, Flash, Spick, and Span.  The cocker spaniels may have only been recently classified as pets, but the Queen has been breeding them at Sandringham for years, along with labrador retrievers.  The Sandringham estate needs the dogs to fetch birds shot down during Sandringham�s famous shooting parties.  The spaniels cover the ground near the shooters, while the labradors run farther out.  The dogs are trained to recognize whistled commands that tell them where to find the birds.  The Queen is especially good at guiding dogs to fallen birds with a whistle.