Join the pug club Inside the café for dog lovers

Richard Jones finds out why people are flocking to a café aimed at their pets

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 Café, 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 doginspired art on display (when the café 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. One of the biggest animal stars on Facebook is Doug the Pug, who has 5.9million 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. And 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 in his hind legs. It turned out