Saving Dogs and the Teens : If dogs ran upright and teen-agers could be trained not to chase cars . . .

One cannot help but observe the irony of events that linked two divergent species of mammal last week in a valley that abounds in both. Teen-agers and dogs.

In the case of the quadrapeds that bark, Councilman Joel Wachs proposed that parks be built in the city especially for dogs.

Therein, the animals could run, jump, roll over, fetch, chase their tails, write haiku poetry and generally carry on in a manner that befits their instinct or training.

In the case of the bipeds that slouch and mumble, Councilwoman Joy Picus proposed restrictions that would severely limit participation in a run they already possess.

The place is a dance club called Phases. The teens gather there essentially to emulate the activities of the dogs, with the possible exception of writing haiku, an endeavor, alas, in which they are probably not trainable.

Both proposals have met with resistance, a response that has followed proposals since Adam first said shall we? and Eve said no.

Dog owners in Laurel Canyon, where the dog problem began, don’t want a special park. They want to be able to run their pets, leashless, in Laurel Canyon Park.

Baby owners, who also use the park, object to that kind of unbridled freedom not only because dogs are known to occasionally eat smaller babies, but also because no decent mommy wants her little Tricia crawling through doggie-do.

What works in Topanga doesn’t necessarily work in Laurel Canyon.

The teen-agers are objecting because a proposed city law, among other outrages, would prohibit patrons under 13 from attending Phases and would force the club to close at 10 p.m. on weekdays.

Neighbors of the club initiated this action. While the teen-agers, to their credit, do not desecrate the area with teenie-do, they do, according to witnesses, engage in sex, the use of drugs and the consumption of alcohol on the streets surrounding the club.

It isn’t so much the sex, drugs and booze, as I understand it, but the generic inability of anyone between the ages of 12 and 20 to sin quietly.

But, still, the proposals by Wachs and Picus are both probably bad ideas, which is fairly standard for anything emanating from downtown.

The dog proposal fails because the city, if it builds a puppy park at all, will probably build it in South-Central L.A., where dog runs, prisons and toxic dumps are traditionally situated.

No one from Laurel Canyon is going to run his pedigreed Bourbonnais pointer in Watts. They would rather run them in Cambodia, where the chances of ending the run alive are slightly better than they are in the ghetto.

The teen-club restrictions don’t make it either, for the simple reason that those barred from the environs of Phases will only spread their illicit activities throughout the entire Valley, thereby keeping everyone awake.

So I guess it’s up to me again. I have a modest proposal.

As you might recall, Councilman Hal Bernson, spiritual leader of the Valley’s Kick Smut in the Butt Crusade, wants certain forms of adult entertainment clustered into one central industrial area.

It would be a kind of Smut City, away from those neighborhoods where decent little children attend school and frightened older people pray one day a week for the sins of the other six, a practice not unlike United Way’s One Big Give.

In the spirit of Bernson’s suggestion, I propose a single convenient location that would similarly combine the activities of running dogs and dancing teens, since it is virtually impossible to distinguish one from the other anyhow.

If dogs ran upright and teen-agers could be trained not to chase cars, there would be no lines of distinction at all.

The beauty of establishing Animal Town, in addition to isolating both problems, exists in what city planners call divided prime usage. You walk your dog during the day and dance your teen-ager at night.

They would never have to occupy the same space at the same time, thereby preventing both dog bites and the permanent damage Prince turned to full quadrasonic range might cause an innocent animal’s brain.

But why stop there? Consider combining the activities of all the Valley’s social outcasts into one grand arena of multimisbehavior: dogs, teen-agers and dirty men drooling over a lively spectrum of sexual immorality.

It would be a park to rival Disneyland itself, a living monument to the bickering and the barking that have come to characterize a society increasingly under siege by its own creations. Mickey Mouse just doesn’t represent us anymore.

The only other addition we might consider in our megapark of urban distractions would be to include the City Council members themselves. There, in a climate of convenient symbiosis, both the lawmakers and the lawbreakers might amuse themselves to the point of mutual obsession and thereby leave the rest of us alone.

Then we could start society all over again, and maybe get it right the next time.