James Middleton brings dog Ella as his red carpet date to the GQ Awards

The annual GQ Men of the Year Awards were held Tuesday night in London -- and one of the most exciting moments of the night had to be James Middleton's surprising red carpet date.

Duchess Kate's younger brother arrived at the Tate Modern looking handsome as ever in a plush red suede tuxedo, alongside a familiar furry face: his cocker spaniel, Ella. The adorable pup, a trained therapy dog, walked alongside the 32-year-old in a tartan "Pets as Therapy" vest in support of the UK charity Pets As Therapy.

"Both very handsome!" wrote one commenter on a photo Middleton shared to Instagram. "You are a great ambassador for mental health @jmidy Thank you James! We all admire and respect you 🙌👏💚," said another.

Middleton, who mainly stays away from the spotlight, has opened up about his struggles with mental health in the past and how his five dogs, Ella, Zulu, Inka, Luna and Mabel, have helped him cope with depression.

“Fundamentally inside me I know how much the dogs helped me. I find it easier talking to the dogs than I sometimes do to humans,” he said to The Standard earlier this month, later adding that Ella had accompanied him to all his therapy sessions.

“With just putting dogs in the right places in hospitals and mental health centres, you really break through because people just chat about the dog, and you have conversations," he continued about the power of the animal.

He concluded: “All I’m trying to do is to say that talking about mental health should be part of an everyday conversation, the same way that if I said ‘I have hayfever’ it would be a normal discussion. Mental health should be as easy to talk about as that, as opposed to it being this behind-closed-doors type of conversation.”