Tea and Terriers, Anyone?

The request was simple and specific: BYOB. Guests complied. Each brought something small and tasteful to the party--a Boston terrier.

It was Lise Allard’s second annual Boston Tea Party, held on her expansive lawn a block east of the Palisades in Santa Monica. Allard, who works at Orion Pictures Corp., is, like many Boston terrier fanciers, adamantly attached to the breed in general and to her Darla in particular.

About 30 owners brought their pooches--bulgy-eyed, bat-eared, bite-size creatures in black and white. They might look funny, but they can’t be dismissed: The Boston is the oldest native American breed. They are sweet and loyal, and if their saliva were unsanitary, most of their owners would probably be dead: This is a dog that loves to lick faces.

Director and former actor Bud Cort showed up with one dog and two people. One of his biped companions held the video camera as Cort directed a home movie starring, of course, his little Lillian.

“OK, pan the group, then pan back and end on Lillian,” he commanded the camerawoman.

Dog trainer Charles Wingate of Santa Monica, owner of Daphne the Wonder Dog, allowed his prized pet to show off a few of her tricks. She is a fixture on the Venice boardwalk, after all, where she can often be seen displaying her extraordinary ability to herd a basketball, which is--to underline the talent involved here--bigger by half than she is.

Most of the guests were from the Westside, but there is an apparent hotbed of Boston terrier fanciers in the San Fernando Valley: at least four of the dogs hailed from Reseda.

While humans munched on Boston baked beans and Boston cream pies, dogs cavorted, frequently descending into the kind of disreputable behavior one might see at a Grateful Dead concert.

Allard’s dog, Darla, was not pleased to have her space invaded by so many of her species and let her disfavor be known. Male dogs engaged in the kind of body language that got Elvis banned from the hips down on the “Ed Sullivan Show.” (Elvis, incidentally, bought his mother a Boston terrier shortly before she died.)

“Oh well,” sighed photographer Bill Nation, whose Lucy was a model of canine respectability. “This is what happens when you mix dogs and alcohol.”