RUFFIN’ IT

It is a place where pooches play, pups are petted, poodles primped and Pekingese preened.

Where Lab people and beagle people and Great Dane people live happily with man’s best friend. Where the bark of golden retrievers, German shepherds and cocker spaniels is music, the smell of dog is welcome and the grass grows long enough for Rover to frolic.

It is Kermore Lane, a one-block island of county land in the middle of Stanton that is home to more kennels, dog trainers and dog breeders than any other area of Orange County. On the street locals call “Kennel Row,” a dog is the highest and best thing you can be.

Here, on a rural stretch amid the county sprawl, 14 kennels and dog breeders share a single long block, most living among the dogs they are paid to board, raise and train. Seven other residents hold permits allowing them to share their homes with 20 or more dogs each.

And for blocks around, you’d have to be crazy to move in if you have a problem living with the constant cacophony of barks, yelps and howls.

“If you’re into dogs, heck, there’s no better place to live,” said Mark McDorman of the Orange County Animal Control, who lived on Kermore Lane and cleaned kennels there years ago.

“It’s a special place, the kind of place where dog people feel at home. There are places in Orange County where you couldn’t have a street like that because people would have a fit. But on Kermore, having lots of dogs is the natural state of things.”

The people of Kermore Lane do without things like sidewalks and street lights. Those goodies stop where Stanton city limits do. There are no fancy condos on Kermore, no planned community.

Kermore Lane is not exactly a garden spot, sitting as it does near some high-crime neighborhoods, rundown boulevards and shopping strips that have seen better days.

But the modest homes of the lane have certain advantages, like large backyards where pups can cavort, and agricultural zoning that makes a love of lots of dogs no crime.

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This slice of dog heaven was born in the 1930s when county planners zoned Kermore Lane for agricultural use. Orange and lemon trees laden with fruit today stand as testimony to the pooch paradise’s beginning as citrus groves.

As developers bought up land all around the street, as the city of Stanton annexed those areas to make money on property tax and sales tax revenue, no one bought on Kermore.

For at least 40 years, records show that dog breeders and kennel operators have made their living on Kermore--taking advantage of zoning that does not prohibit large numbers of animals or their particular business from existing alongside homes. In most of Orange County, it is illegal to have more than three dogs in your home.

Stanton officials said they have no interest in annexing the street these days. The cost of providing services such as sewage and garbage pickup to the homes would easily top any revenue the kennels might bring in, City Manager Terry Matz said.

A developer tried to buy some land on the street to build condos a few years back but was run off, according to residents.

The end result is enough to make a dog wag its tail.

“The key to happiness on this block is that the person who lives next to you is not going to be a dog hater, that’s guaranteed,” said Diana Sparacino, 43, who runs a Kermore Lane dog training and boarding business.

“I’m a dog trainer. Other places, people look down on me. They don’t recognize this as a profession. Here it’s different. Here I feel at home. Here this is what people do.”

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Kermore Lane isn’t the only place in Southern California to find kennels. Dog boarding businesses are studded throughout the Southland. But the only area in Orange County that compares with Kermore Lane’s number of tails-per-block is a strip of land along Riverside Drive near Costa Mesa where, according to Animal Control and Animal Shelter Services, about 10 kennels sit side by side. That area postdates Kennel Row by years, said Bill Grant of the county planning department.

“Kermore Lane seems like it’s been that way forever,” Grant said. “People just found out at some point that this was an area where dogs were welcome, and it just sort of grew from one kennel to two to a dozen. It’s kind of like dog heaven.”

People on Kennel Row prefer not to dwell on the word kennel. Many breed and show dogs and run boarding businesses on the side. Others are trainers, those wonderful folks who teach your dog not to pee on the living room carpet. Nearly all decorate their homes with oil paintings of dogs, sculptures of dogs and dog show trophies.

They prefer to call their businesses doggy camps, doggy resorts, doggy day care, even doggy bed and breakfasts. Bring your pooch to Kennel Row and a dog trainer will explain how to fix the inner dog--and make the outer dog’s digging, chewing and biting disappear. A woman who looks a bit like a miniature schnauzer will tell you she’s proud of the resemblance. Another will show you her dog’s Jacuzzi.

“You have to be crazy to live like this, but it keeps you from going insane,” said Sandra Weddell Jaqua, her 40 sporting dogs running toward her, lapping at her, nuzzling her, running in circles around her feet.

“I never had a senior prom. I was at a dog show. But I’d rather have been there. A dog show was more interesting to me than men.”

This week, Kennel Row kicks into high bark. While the rest of us go on vacation or back to visit family, the pooch motels and pup country clubs on the street fill up.

Meribeth Moore had the holidays in mind when she picked up her poodle at Mission Gate Kennels. She’d left her companion there for one night to see how Sundae managed before deciding whether to board her there over Thanksgiving.

“She’s my baby. She’s family. She’s all that I have,” Moore said. “It’s just like taking your child to day care. You’ve got to be careful who you leave her with.”

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For people like Moore, for whom dogs are their everything, there are luxurious kennel accommodations like the Celebrity Suite.

“That’s where the dog stays with me,” said Jim Petro, head trainer at a kennel called Crossroads Country Club Resort.

“He watches TV with me, follows me around, lives here with me in my house. Some people figure, why should their dog be treated any less like a best friend when their owner’s not around?”

That’s the sort of question people on Kennel Row know the answer to.

Sparacino said long ago, before she came to live on Kermore Lane, she was in a bad marriage and walked around unhappy much of the time. Now she sleeps with 11 dogs in her room every night. In the dog runs behind her house, she plays more dogs new age music at night to help them sleep, and rock music during the day.

“I’ve lived in places where I had to sneak the dog into the front door so the neighbors wouldn’t complain. Not here,” Sparacino said.

“When I was little, my mom wouldn’t let me have my dog in my bed. I said, ‘Oh no? Wait till I grow up, I’m gonna have all the dogs I want.’ And look at me now.”