Philadelphia Inquirer

The pug-licious life

No mere dogs, pugs inspire their humans to redefine canine ownership. Meetup groups stoke the obsession.

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The pug-licious life

No mere dogs, pugs inspire their humans to redefine canine ownership. Meetup groups stoke the obsession.

By Tanya Barrientos
Inquirer Staff Writer

Best to get one thing straight right from the start. There are dog owners, and there are people who own pugs.

Say, for example, you see a guy with a Labrador retriever at the park. He'll have a leash on his dog, maybe a tennis ball in his pocket. There will be running and fetching and whatnot.

And, let's say you come across a spaniel and its owner. There may be a stick involved, or a pull toy or, at the very least, some basic exercise. As in walking and jumping.

Pugs?

No balls. No sticks. No jumping. Maybe a baby stroller. Maybe a leather cap. Definitely some bottled water, because pugs don't like exercise. They are prone to heatstroke. And skin allergies. They also get eye infections. And have weak knees.

Now picture 80 of these squashed-nosed-peg-legged-curly-tailed-almost-always-outrageously-pampered pooches gathered together in one place, and you've got Pug Day, which happens once a month at Center City's Schuylkill River Park (next meeting is 10 a.m. Saturday, May 6).

Fueled by the unabashed fervor of local pugites, and a Web site called Meetup.com, the doggie social has become the third-largest pugfest in the world.

As in the entire planet.

Six hundred and one Philly area pug owners belong to the meetup group, outnumbered only by the pug partisans in New York (795) and Austin, Texas (681).

Earlier this month Robert Harcum, a construction project manager from North Wales, drove an hour to attend the pug mixer - after cooking a scrambled egg breakfast for his dog, Q.

Pilates instructor Brie Neff and her boyfriend Dan Fleischmann of Queen Village pulled a pint-size seersucker dress out of the hand-crafted armoire that belongs to her dog, Lotus Blossom, for the get-together. Pink with rhinestones, to match the pup's pink leather leash, and her pink poop-scooper bags.

Bonnie Maurer, the meetup organizer, says this whole thing started about three years ago, "when there were five people and six pugs."

Now, Maurer, a secretary for the Runnemede school district, plays den mother to the entire pug-loving pack, including her five wide-eyed pets Gabriel, Madison, Tyler, Gizmo and Scooby.

As she speaks, the pug-to-human ratio at the park swells and, before you know it, there's a tornado of toy-breed action taking place at ankle level.

Sniffing, more sniffing and, in-between a bit of chasing, a lot more sniffing.

On the sidelines, people exchange pug tips (use a cotton swab to clean that skin fold over the nose) and "family" photos (one guy says he has no pictures of his kids in his wallet, but two of his pugs).

This is a far cry from the serious political gatherings that brought the New York-based Web site Meetup.com to America's attention. In 2004, supporters of Howard Dean used the Internet site to expand its voter base, and since then it has become a powerful political tool.

It also happens to be a site where people looking to share much more offbeat interests can turn. Philadelphia, for example, has the nation's only meetup for goth parents, and ranks second in the size of its witches meetup group, behind Houston.

Ironically, dogs that are the most popular with pet owners aren't the most popular with the local meetup crowd. There are no Philly-area Labrador retriever groups listed on the Web site, even though Labs are the nation's top breed.

Chihuahuas? Sixty-two groups in the five-county area. Italian greyhounds? Ten.

Pugs, incidentally, don't rank in the nation's top 10 breeds listed by the American Kennel Club. But pet historian Katherine Grier, author of Pets in America, says she's not at all surprised that pugs rule the meetup world.

"Pug owners have been like this forever. I don't know what it is about pugs, they attract very passionate owners," Grier says.

Pugs were one of the first breeds of dogs to have a loyal fan base, she explains.

"They were a fad all the way back in the 1870s and the 1880s," Grier says. "They showed up in advertisements, in children's books, I've seen catalogs showing pugs with fancy collars, with bells on them and all kinds of ornaments."

She believes pugs are climbing in popularity right now because America is in the middle of a strong dog-as-social-companion era.

"Pugs are funny, and they've never had anything to do except hang out with people," Grier says. Seriously, pugs, developed in China around 400 B.C., were bred to do nothing. No herding. No ratting. No guarding.

"They've never had a function," Grier says. "I think they may be closer than any dog to behaving like a cat. Except cats won't tolerate being dressed up."

Pugs, their owners swear, do not complain when they're stuffed into anything from a tutu to a T-shirt and even eye goggles. In fact, Maurer says, the local pug group holds a popular "pugoween" party every year at the end of October.

At the dog park, Maurer gives pink name tags to the girl dogs, blue to the boys, so their owners can tell them apart.

No Rovers or Fidos in this crowd. Try Zoe. Lexi. Tucker. Roxie. Jake. Puddin. Timber. Babe.

For two hours, the pugs scamper while their owners mingle. Sitting at the periphery, underneath a tree, is Jessica Doty of Grays Ferry. This is the sixth meetup she and her dog Sydney have attended.

"But honestly," she says softly, "I thought it was a little weird when I first came, the dogs in little outfits and everything, just weird."

So which pug is yours, Jessica?

"That's her, over there," she says, pointing to a fine portly pup wearing a pink straw hula skirt and matching Hawaiian lei.

Pug Peculiarities

• Nobody knows where the name "pug" came from, but there is a monkey called a pug that has a face similar to the wrinkled pooch's. Or, it might have derived from the Latin word "pugnus," which means fist, since the pug's mug looks squinched.

• Pugs aren't among the top 10 breeds in America, but a few cities have recently gone pug wild. The little guys hit the top 10 in Washington, Seattle, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Manhattan and St. Paul, Minn.

• Pugs in history include the dog named Pompey that saved the life of Prince William the Silent of the Netherlands. Also, Josephine Bonaparte, wife of Napoleon, owned a pug named Fortune that bit the emperor's leg on the royal couple's wedding night.

• Pugs on the big screen? Frank the pug in Men In Black; Otis in The Adventures of Milo and Otis.

• Celebs with pugs include Jenna Elfman, Jessica Alba, Billy Joel, Tori Spelling, Ted Danson and Paula Abdul.

SOURCE: American Kennel Club,

Dog & Kennel magazine

Contact staff writer Tanya Barrientos at 215-854-5728 or tbarrientos@phillynews.com.