Join Bertie, social media star and high street model, in pug heaven at the Pop-up Pug Cafe

Have you met Bertie? He’s a social media phenomenon, has done some modelling (well, hoodies and woolly jumpers for River Island) and, despite his diminutive stature, is something of a heart-throb. And yet his greatest achievement is still to come.

Tomorrow, he’ll be the main attraction at a ticket-only event in east London: all 500 places sold out in 10 minutes, and 1,500 people are on a waiting list. Some are flying in from the United States just to be at this landmark event, to have their pictures taken with Bertie and to shake his paw.

Wait, did I forget to mention that Bertie is a pug?

You see, at the Pop-Up Pug Cafe, people come for the coffee, but stay for the petting. Some 270 pugs will be let loose in The Book Club in Shoreditch tomorrow, the latest event on a nationwide circuit that’s the brainchild of Bertie’s ‘mum’, events organiser Anushka Fernando and her partner, James Morgan.

“It’ll be like a coffee morning with pugs,” says Morgan. While the humans enjoy a cappuccino, their dogs can have a whipped-cream pugguccino, served with pooch-friendly treats, like a “cheese bark-scotti” or an “apple and blueberry woofin”. The pugs are free to stroll around, admiring the dog-inspired art on display (when the pop-up cafe popped up in Brighton, a local artist created a series of graffiti featuring pugs). 

If it all sounds very Planet of The Pugs, then that’s because it is. But, then, we do love our pugs. One of the biggest animal stars on Facebook is Doug the Pug, who has 5.9 million likes – nearly six times more than The Great British Bake Off. “I think every pug has their own Instagram profile,” says Morgan. “They’re social media savvy animals.”

Celebrity fans and owners of the ugly-bug dogs include Paris Hilton, Kelly Brook and actor Hugh Laurie, and Queen Victoria kept 36. So while the pug’s slightly squished features and enormous lolling tongues only add to their cuddliness, there is a sadness in their wonky eyes. All of Britain’s pugs are thought to be descended from just 50 animals, inbreeding that has caused a host of health problems for the current generation – from breathing difficulties (thanks to their flattened noses) and abnormally shaped vertebrae that gives them their oh-so-cute double curl in the tail, but also a lifetime of back problems.

For all their breeding defects and the near-inevitability of huge vet bills, the pug comes with a high price tag; a puppy will usually cost upwards of £1,500. But they remain a treasured breed due to their friendly, loyal and ever-so-cheeky temperament.

Just 18 months old, Bertie has already had his fair share of medical issues. At four months, he developed a spinal problem for which Fernando and Morgan were advised that he might have to be put down. “We thought he was healthy and normal,” Fernando explains, “and then overnight he had a paralysis on his hind legs. It turned out the messages going down his spinal cord were getting intercepted. So we took him to Noel Fitzpatrick – the super-vet on Channel 4 – and he had a huge operation. They took out some vertebrae and replaced them with metal rods.”

After the operation, Bertie was crate-rested – put in a cage so he wouldn’t move about and injure himself. This is a traumatic period for any pup, let along one so young. “During the months he was going through rehabilitation,” says Fernando, “he missed out on that vital socialisation that puppies need around children, other dogs, the road. Bertie wasn’t exposed to any of those situations.”

As a consequence, Fernando set up a pug meet-up in their Surrey hometown so Bertie could catch up, which eventually morphed into the pop-up cafe for owners and admirers of the dog. “I saw that there was a pug cafe in Tokyo,” acknowledges Fernando, “but that is more like a petting zoo for pug lovers. I thought: ‘Why don’t we do a cafe just for pugs?’”

Guildford is, she says, a “very dog-friendly town”, so it was easy for Fernando to get her local coffee shop, Esquires, to host the first event back in May. It caught the attention of a local newspaper, and the turnout far exceeded the number of dogs in the Guildford Pug Club. There were a few teething problems, with some greedy pets having too many treats for themselves, leaving nothing for the others, but the logistics were ironed out at their second event in Brighton, the boho haven by the sea that’s inevitably home to a large pug community. 

After this weekend’s London pop-up, Morgan says there will be as yet unannounced events in Glasgow and Birmingham. “It’s like a hobby that’s got out of control,” he concedes. “Some people eat out, others go to the gym – we go home and organise the next pug cafe.”

While scrolling through Bertie’s Instagram account, Fernando knocks back his ears every few minutes so they flop over like normal (“No one wants to see your ear wax, Bertie”). There’s a photo of him having ripped up Morgan’s passport, and a picture of a dozen pugs at Bertie’s first birthday party. There’s one of Bertie standing resplendent in front of an Andy Warhol-esque painting of himself that covers an entire wall. I’d say the couple loved Bertie like a child, but I don’t know any parents who are so besotted with their offspring.

We then start scrolling through the profiles of Bertie’s friends. There is Kimchi from Tokyo, who sent Bertie a Christmas card last December, and Rolly, who helped Bertie through rehab when they were both suffering from back problems. Bertie also has a mistress, Pearl, who is from Arizona and a brand ambassador for a range of dog harnesses. Great: a pug with more online followers and a better social life than me.

But it’s impossible to be angry with a pug. “I had loved them for years, way before Bertie came along,” says Fernando, “but I couldn’t keep one, because of work. But whenever I met one walking down the street, it would make it the best day ever, and we want to share that experience with everyone. You’ll see. If the pugs are happy, than everyone’s happy.”

Tomorrow’s Pop-Up Pug Cafe is at The Book Club (100-106 Leonard Street, London EC2A, 020 7684 8618, wearetbc.com). For future events, go to pugcafe.co.uk