This Dog Park Is a Shore Thing

The sun. The surf. The snouts.

For dogs and their owners, life doesn’t get much better than a mile-long stretch of Huntington Beach, where dogs are officially allowed to romp through the surf.

Huntington Beach Dog Beach stretches from Goldenwest Street to Seapoint Avenue off Coast Highway north of the pier. In the 1980s, it joined Leo Carillo State Beach north of Malibu and Ocean Beach’s Dog Beach in San Diego as one of only a few stretches along the coast where dogs can legally frolic. Dogs also are allowed at Laguna Beach’s Main Beach from mid-September through May and after dusk.

The beach’s allure is simple for its users, who congregate from across Southern California: It’s the joy that comes from watching so many happy dogs.

Pups like Lucille, an 8-year-old Boston terrier. Her owner, Shirley Gowan, is a member of the beach’s preservation society and travels with the family from Duarte for Lucy’s beach time. Lucy had been terrorized by larger dogs as a stray and over the last four years has been socialized by spending time around other beach dogs, Gowan said.

“We come down here as often as we can,” she said, as Lucy scampered through the surf, furiously shaking a small green plastic turtle.

Noah, an 8-year-old Shih Tzu, ambled over with his owners, Pamela and Don Olszewski of Cypress. It was Don’s turn to carry Corky, their 14-year-old Shih Tzu who is blind and suffers from a heart condition. They bring the dogs to the beach at least once a month.

“They love the water,” Pamela Olszewski said.

Sonny, a 6-month-old Chihuahua, wasn’t quite ready to take the plunge. His humans, Andrea Muezel and Lee Cook, drove from San Bernardino so Sonny could have his first taste of saltwater. The fawn-colored dynamo bounced up and down the beach, ears flapping, while the couple tried to coax him toward the water.

Just down the beach, wet wasn’t a problem for Jake, a 2-year-old German shepherd mix who dripped happily as he stood in the surf line. Owner Larissa Ek of La Verne learned about the beach after reading a notice posted at their local bark park. They made the drive in an hour and planned to stay the day, but had only enough quarters to feed the beach parking meter for two hours.

“This is really so nice that they let you bring dogs here,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to come to the beach without him. It wouldn’t be as much fun.”

The beach has long been a magnet for four-footers, city marine safety officer Claude Panis said. When it was a state beach, leashed dogs were allowed, and users wanted that continued when the city took over in 1985. The city amended its beach ordinances to allow dogs despite concerns about cleanliness and complaints by some joggers who said they were intimidated by so many dogs.

Problems continued after the city assumed control, Panis said, because owners weren’t cleaning up after their dogs. “There was dog poop everywhere,” he said. “People were stepping in it and our [lifeguard trucks] were driving through it.”

That prompted the creation of the Huntington Dog Beach Preservation Society, which rallied volunteers to police the beach, install plastic-bag containers and trashcans for cleanup, and post rules at entrances. The group sponsors cleanup days on the second Sunday of each month. The next cleanup day is Aug. 10.

The group’s efforts saved the beach, Panis said.

“It’s been great for the city because you have a group of people that takes the time and keeps it clean and makes sure people are educated on the rules,” he said. “It’s probably our most popular stretch of beach.”

For Martin Senat, founder and president of the Dog Beach society, “It’s doggy Disneyland.”

The group spends from $6,000 to $8,000 a month on expenses, he said, including passing out 100,000 plastic bags each month. Fourteen employees train beach users, provide educational materials and patrol the beach, where dogs can be off the leash l only if they are in the water or on wet sand.

Overall, the society has given the city about $50,000 for the beach. The group sells T-shirts and hats and accepts donations through its Web site at www.dogbeach.org.

Dog Beach boasts a big presence on the Internet, where dog lovers on several sites rave about its cleanliness, accessibility and length of open beach. Visitors, however, are cautioned to bring lots of quarters -- the parking meters credit 10 minutes for each quarter, meaning a three-hour stay requires 18 quarters.

The beach’s popularity has grown since 1996, when Los Angeles County cities began enforcing a ban on dogs at beaches that had been in effect for 27 years but was largely ignored. Fines reached as high as $500.

That same year, state lifeguards at San Onofre State Beach closed a popular stretch of beach there to dogs during the summer. The move came after a lifeguard was bitten on the hand -- not by the dog, but by its owner.