‘People who don’t love animals think these people out here are nuts.’

Save Our Pet’s History in Eternity Inc. sprang up in panic four years ago when a group of pet-lovers became convinced that a developer might replace their pets’ graves with houses.

Last week, having proven themselves to be tough, resourceful and organized--as well as overtly sentimental--members of the nonprofit organization at last celebrated an unexpectedly exhausting victory.

Members of the group dedicated the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas as a pet cemetery in perpetuity.

It was a duly emotional affair, yet still tinged with the world-weary detachment that had come with experience.

“Send money, not tears,” park manager Mary Bayer urged all who might care to show their solidarity.

Skeptics sniggered in the beginning when the pet owners announced their intention to buy the 10-acre cemetery so that its owner, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, could not sell it to a developer. The SPCA had received the cemetery as a donation but offered it for sale when it found the responsibility for the dead a bit distracting from its efforts for the living.

With their interest set squarely on eternity, however, the members of SOPHIE found no problem sticking with the campaign, even as months turned into years of obstacles.

SOPHIE’s membership, which now numbers 1,200, raised the $100,000 asking price and, when the deal seemed to be going sour, even filed suit against the SPCA.

Along the way, the group got a bill through the Legislature giving pet cemeteries protection similar to that applied to human ones. The bill was sponsored by state Sen. Alan Robbins, himself an animal fancier.

The sale went through late last year. In March the buyer, seller and nearby property owners settled their lawsuit out of court.

Sunday, about 200 members gathered on a spot of lawn near the cemetery’s 40,000 grave sites to celebrate over punch and homemade cake iced with pink and yellow roses.

Behind them, the 3.7 acres of grave sites that have already been filled shone brilliantly with deep green grass and yellow and red splashes of floral bouquets.

Religious statues, beds of roses and tall eucalyptus trees set a serene mood.

Dennis J. Polen, attorney for the group, made an unusual and telling dedication by reading the names of dozens of members who had played crucial roles in the struggle but had since drifted out of prominence.

Madeline Williamson, director of the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce, reminisced about some of the celebrity pets that have come in the cemetery’s 58 years. Among them are Hopalong Cassidy’s horse and Room 8, the cat that wandered into an Echo Park school one day in the 1950s and stayed on until its death in 1968.

Williamson said the cemetery should be dedicated as a historical landmark.

Robbins aide Jack Sheffield stepped forward to receive a bronzed copy of the bill the Van Nuys senator guided into law.

That law provides that, once dedicated as a pet cemetery, a piece of land cannot be used for any other purpose except through a court order. To get such an order, a developer would have to gather written authorization from the owners of all pets buried there, or their heirs.

Even though the leaders of SOPHIE are feeling no inclination to sell, they seemed to draw courage from that requirement.

After the ceremony, Bayer, a slender, red-haired woman in a cowboy shirt and jeans, told a small group who remained to talk that she had already been approached by a developer.

She said she told him, “Well, there are 40,000 pets buried out there and it’s dedicated, and if you wanted to buy it, you’d have to get in touch with every one of their owners or their heirs.”

His reply, she said proudly, was, “Well, I’ll see you.”

“I’ll tell you, this group has hung together,” president Robert Ditrick said reverently. “We all have jobs. But, besides our jobs, this was our priority, to get out and get this cemetery.”

Bayer said SOPHIE’s next priority is to add a building and a chapel.

“These are kind of what our dreams are,” she said demurely.

“You know, sometimes I lay in bed and dream about this place,” Ditrick confided.

Meanwhile, a couple of dozen pet owners strolled in the park.

Two of them, Norman and Doris Johnson of South Pasadena, toiled over a cluster of seven of their eight graves in the cemetery, pruning grass, replacing faded silk flowers with fresh ones, polishing black granite headstones.

One was engraved, “Bassie / A Great Personality,” another, “Nibbs and Lowie / If Greatness is Unselfish Love They Reached the Pinnacle.”

“It’s the only thing we can do to take care of them now,” Doris Johnson said.

She said the couple’s visits have grown less frequent than they once were.

“Now our dogs at home are getting old,” she said. “We really should be home with them now.”

She pushed two plastic sunflower windmills into the earth--a toy for their pets to play with.

“People who don’t love animals think these people out here are nuts,” she said.

Offering no rebuttal, she dropped the thought there.