Reigning cats and dogs

As the plummy Penelope Keith voice-over announced at the outset that royals have always behaved eccentrically with pets, I somehow knew that The Royals and their Pets (Five) was going to be heavy-going.

Before anyone starts accusing me of some form of pet phobia, I should like to point out that I currently have two dogs, behaved with impeccable courtesy towards the mostly ginger cats my parents used to fill up their house with, and, as a very young boy, had meaningful relationships with a hamster called Katie, who might well have been a boy, and a green budgie called Jim, who was quite possibly a girl. It didn't matter either way. There is no problem with me as far as pets go.

Yet there was something non-heartwarming about this trawl through pampered pooches and a few other creatures. The fact that Queen Victoria had 88 pets in the course of what was admittedly a very long life left me thinking that she couldn't possibly have loved all of them, even if the whole lot had died young in freak attacks by giant birds of prey.

Then there was the reminder that Princess Anne has become a convicted felon because of the antisocial activities of her bull terriers. I wondered if the paltry £500 fine had caused any royal rethink, and decided it most probably hadn't.

Most depressing of all was to be presented with more information than I needed about the Queen's corgis. I know for a fact that these are horrible little dogs, animals that have been trained for centuries to nip the heels and ankles of cattle and sheep. To this end, they have been provided with very short legs, and a brain/eyesight combination which cannot differentiate between a human being and a cow.

Thus the Queen's corgis misbehave, and Her Majesty has to call upon the services of her trusty dogwhisperer to pacify these aggressive little bundles.

I was under the impression that long ago all corgis had been banished to Wales. They certainly should have been. And the fact that some unnamed royal was responsible for creating a new breed called a dorgi - half-corgi, half-dachshund, if you please - presumably means there is an even shorter dog knocking around which specialises in savaging little toes.

Meanwhile, at Sandringham, a new race of giant super-labradors is being produced, dogs which benefit a great deal from the introduction of newfoundland genes. It's as if the royal family has set itself up as a breakaway, hoodlum faction of the Kennel Club.

There was more. Information was vouchsafed, which has obviously been hidden away in secret files. Edward VII was very close to a Norfolk terrier which went by the name of Caesar. This little fellow was so beloved of the monarch that he took pride of place in Edward's funeral procession, ahead of a disgruntled bunch of live kings.

The problem with Caesar was that he was a byword for incontinence, with a particular penchant for relieving himself against the legs of any foreign dignitary who came within spraying range. George V carried on this tradition, except that the incontinent creature in his case was a parrot called Charlotte.