PETS : Park Where Dogs Roam Unleashes a New Debate

There are too many dogs at the dog park.

That is the consensus these days at Laurel Canyon Park, the four-acre slice of canine paradise tucked in a glen off Mulholland Drive west of Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

Too many poodles. Too many pit bulls. Too many Chihuahuas. Just too darn many dogs.

Neighborhood dog lovers campaigned for years to get a place where their pets could run free. They lobbied, they protested, they were arrested, they were tried, they organized.

And in 1988, they got what they wanted: a park where dogs can roam free, unshackled by leashes.

It’s the only park of its kind in Los Angeles. And that, said Jane Purse, is precisely the problem.

“Unfortunately, the city has never been convinced that the hundreds of thousands of dogs in Los Angeles need something more than four acres of a dog park,” said Purse, the octogenarian who led the effort to create the leash-free zone. (Park rules still require leashes between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.)

When she started the push for the park in 1982, Laurel Canyon Park was known as an isolated, graffiti-covered hangout for gangs.

Using a combination of private money and public initiative, Purse and Parkwatch Inc., the local activist group, got the area spruced up and fenced off.

The group, mostly dog owners from the area, waged a vocal battle with the city and local opposition for several years, until then-Councilman Michael Woo helped negotiate a compromise, setting hours when leashes are required.

The City Council approved the leash-free hours in April, 1988, but only after a lengthy and sometimes contentious battle. One of the landmarks of the fight came in 1985, when dog owners literally fought with animal control officers sent to the park to enforce the leash law.

Several dog owners were jailed and charged with resisting arrest. (One was convicted and ordered to stay away from the park.) One dramatic hearing before the Board of Recreation and Parks was interrupted when a neighborhood opponent of the dog park delivered a plastic bag full of dog droppings she had collected at the park.

The woodsy glen in the hilly, upscale neighborhood is somewhat more peaceful now.

But the park may be a victim of its own success. “It’s going to sink under its own weight,” said Purse, a 40-year resident who still strolls the meadow with her three dogs. “And I can’t tell you how that breaks my heart.”

On a sunny afternoon last week, 50 or 60 dogs wandered the grounds, cavorting, carousing and barking in glee.

“It looks like husky day,” said Mark Henrickson, a West Hollywood resident whose 10-month-old Siberian husky, Teina, was enjoying a good-natured tumble in the grass with Dusty, a 2-year-old husky owned by Arash Binafard of Beverly Hills.

Henrickson said he brings Teina to the park at least three times a week.

Eileen Conn, a writer for the NBC-TV series “Mad About You,” said she’d been visiting the park daily during the show’s production hiatus.

“That section over there is the worst,” she said, pointing to an area in the middle of the expansive lawn, where a herd of larger dogs was crowding around a picnic table. “That’s where the bigger, more aggressive dogs hang out.”

Since it is the only park of its kind in the area, Laurel Canyon Park draws people from miles away. On weekends, hundreds of people and dogs pay visits, parking their vehicles as much as half a mile away on Mulholland.

The crowding has brought problems, said Tom Cotter, the city park ranger who supervises the area.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say there are people who get bit, or dogs who fight with other dogs,” he said. “Whenever you have dogs off leash and you have all these different dogs with different personalities, you’re going to have some challenges.”

And some neighbors take issue with the park.

Janja Vujovich, an area resident who campaigned to stop the leash-free rule, said the abundance of dogs has made some neighbors in the isolated area in the Santa Monica Mountains feel like their local park has been stolen from them.

“The park was put there as a place where people could go play ball with their kids,” she said. “Now we have to go down the hill to Beverly Hills or Studio City to do that.”

Friends and foes of the park agree that the situation could be alleviated if the city were to open more dog parks, but city officials say none are planned.

Terry Gatens, an actor who heads the Parkwatch Advisory Board, says he has pleaded with Los Angeles officials to open other leash-free areas.

“Look at all the golf courses,” he said. “If we could have just the 16th hole of one golf course, so many people would be happy.”

Despite the problems, the park is still a haven, said Purse, who is fond of quoting artist David Hockney, an early supporter of the park.

“He said this is ‘the most joyous four acres in Los Angeles,’ ” she said. “Which indeed it was and sometimes still is and can be again.”