COSTA MESA : 101 Dalmatians? Sometimes It Must Seem So

Every day, Randy Warner is surrounded by Dalmatians.

At last count, he had three dogs, but that changes day to day: He has been known to have as many as 15 running around his one-bedroom apartment.

It all started 10 years ago, Warner says, when he spotted a Dalmatian at a dog pound that was going to be put to sleep because it didn’t have any polka dots. He took the dog home, even though he had been looking for a blue-eyed collie.

Since then, the Costa Mesa dog trainer has adopted hundreds of Dalmatians from pounds across Orange County, and then tapped into his dog-lovers network to find them homes.

Over the years Warner has had his problems. He has been kicked out of six apartments in three cities, jailed for code violations three times and cited countless more times by animal control officers for having too many dogs.

But Warner, 40, keeps on. And people continue to drop homeless dogs at his doorstep--wherever he may live.

Sometimes, he says, he gets anonymous tips from workers at dog pounds who can’t bear to see another Dalmatian put to sleep.

“I go through 40 pounds of dog food a week,” Warner said while sitting in his apartment, which has a small yard. “But a lot of my neighbors don’t understand what I do. I have a lot of enemies and I have a lot of friends, but I’m not in this to make friends, I’m in this to save lives.”

He belongs to the Southern California Breed Rescue Assn. and trains dogs at his school, the California Canine College.

While Warner’s love for the Dalmatian has made him nomadic, it has also brought him moments of fame: He has appeared on the David Letterman and Arsenio Hall television shows.

On the Letterman show, one woman had written in to tell the host to buy a new shirt because she was sick of seeing the same ones each week. To which Letterman responded, “Lady, I need a new shirt like I need 51 Dalmatians on my set.”

That’s when Warner came marching onstage with 51 dogs in tow.