Queen Elizabeth II’s beloved 14-year-old Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Willow, passed away in April.

Although this is more of a human interest story, there is a connection between the death of the Queen’s last corgi and the world’s current state of affairs.

Before succumbing to cancer, Willow was the 14th in a line of descendants that stretches back to 1944. Then a Princess, the Queen received her first corgi, Susan, as a present on her 18th birthday. But corgis have actually been the “official” breed of the royal family for even longer than that. The Queen’s father, Prince Albert, brought home Dookie, the first corgi to live at Buckingham Palace, in 1933.

Think about what was transpiring in the world at that time. Fascism was on the rise, not only in Italy under Benito Mussolini, but also in Germany with the election of Adolf Hitler. At the same time, the USSR was developing into a superpower under the strong-arm rule of Josef Stalin. Nationalist fervour ha