Queen Elizabeth II's love for her corgi dogs is well known and it has now emerged that she likes to feed them herself.
As would be expected of royal dogs, they enjoy fillet steak and chicken breast prepared by a chef, delivered by a footman, and then covered with gravy poured by the monarch herself, according to a new book.
A report in the 'Sunday Times' says that these new details of her dog-loving traits are revealed by royal biographer Brian Hoey in 'Pets by Royal Appointment', to be published here this week.
Hoey writes that a royal dress-maker told him that the Queen carried a magnet when she was having clothes fitted and used it to comb the room for any stray pins and needles "so the dogs don't hurt their paws".
The biographer says that her four dogs have dinner at 5pm in Buckingham Palace. They never eat tinned food and have to wait until the Queen has added the gravy to their steak or chicken.
"Then she, and only she, gives the royal command for them to begin eating," writes Hoey.
"It's as precise as that."
The author says the monarch is deeply concerned if anything is wrong with her dogs.
"I was told that on at least one occasion, a homeopathic remedy was given after the Queen argued how much they have helped her," he said.
The Queen fell in love with corgis when her father brought some home in the 1930s.
And, she is not the only British monarch to have revelled in the companionship of dogs.
Queen Victoria kept 88 dogs at Windsor and Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.
