London: He’s the pup who – until this week, at least – was one of the Royal Family’s most closely guarded secrets. Now meet Lupo, the four-month-old cocker spaniel who has most definitely fallen on his paws after being picked as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first pet.
Walking through Kensington Gardens this week, close to the cottage she shares in the palace grounds with Prince William, Kate couldn’t hide her delight at the pup’s antics.
According to the Daily Mail report, the future Queen laughed and joked with her Scotland Yard protection officer as the excited little dog raced around in the grass.
Although she was very much in the city, Kate looked as if she was dressed for a country hike in a pair of £225 hand-crafted Le Chameau Vierzon wellingtons, jeans and a brown shearling Darwin jacket with fur collar and cuffs from LK Bennett topped with a brown leather hat – and some heavy eye make-up.
She and William acquired Lupo shortly before Christmas from a litter born to the Middleton family dog, Ella.
Experts say he is a working cocker rather than the show type, although this has not been confirmed by St James’s Palace. Bred to work as gun dogs, working cockers have shorter ears, flatter skulls, finer coats and enormous stamina.
At first the couple’s spokesman refused even to confirm their pet’s existence, saying it was a ‘private matter’.
After a month-long stand-off the dog’s name finally emerged after a seven-year-old boy simply asked the duchess when she visited Rose Hill Primary School in Oxford this week on behalf of her new charity, The Art Room.
After being handed a toy dog by Abubakr Hussain, Kate said she would name it after her own pet, Lupo, which means wolf in Italian and is a derivative of the Latin word for the animal, Lupus.
Kate and William, an aide later confirmed, chose the name for their pet simply because ‘they liked it’.
The dog has been something of a comfort for 30-year-old Kate while her husband is on deployment in the Falkland Islands.
Indeed, she seemed without a care in the world as she strolled for more than half an hour through the 260-acre public park in the centre of London.
William’s mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, frequently used the gardens for walking and roller blading when she lived at the palace after her divorce from Prince Charles and there is a memorial playground to her there.
