The queen reportedly stopped breeding the dogs around 2002 because she didn’t want them to outlive her.
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Queen Elizabeth II let her corgis roam Buckingham Palace like they were…well…the queen of England. And it wasn’t just her own dogs who benefited from the royal treatment: The late queen’s devotion helped establish a mass market for the breed.
The barkstory: For her 18th birthday, Elizabeth received Susan—not her first corgi, but the first corgi she would breed. All 30 corgis she had during her reign, and a handful of corgi-dachshund mixes, were descended from Susan. The queen reportedly stopped breeding the dogs around 2002 because she didn’t want them to outlive her (and potentially steal the crown).
More influential than Doug the Pug: Demand for corgis spiked alongside public events in the queen’s life. UK Kennel Club registrations for Pembroke corgis jumped in 1944, when she got Susan, and peaked eight years after Elizabeth took the throne, at around 9,000 registered corgis.
By 2012, that number dropped to 241. The Kennel Club blamed the breed’s association with old people, but the downturn was probably also influenced by a 2006 ban on tail docking (a popular practice with corgis). Then in 2017, a year after The Crown premiered and reminded everyone of those fluffy butts, UK corgi registration went up 16% and in 2021, a total of 1,223 corgis were registered in the UK—the highest in almost 30 years.—MM
