When we lived in New York, I used to love taking Charlie to the dog park. There were two pretty good ones within spitting distance of our apartment. Washington Square was our favorite – there were almost always other dogs there, they have a separate small dog area and the people were mostly pretty friendly.

Since moving to LA, we’ve struggled to find someplace relatively close by where Charlie can get some exercise and play with other dogs. At first, I liked the Culver City Boneyard because it’s pretty big, but it’s a little far and frankly sorta lame – often when we go there are only one or two other dogs. The West Hollywood Dog Park is right up the hill, but it smells pretty bad (even by dog park standards) and Charlie doesn’t seem to really enjoy it there.

In the past couple of weeks, I think we’ve found our best local option. The Laurel Canyon Dog Park (on Mulholland off of Laurel Canyon) is relatively close, gigantic, comfortable for me and, most importantly, Charlie seems to enjoy it. He actually runs around – something he refused to do at the other LA parks – and even mixes it up a little with the big dogs. We’ve been going during the early afternoon and there are always tons of dogs there. It looks like a lot of the professional dog walkers bring their charges to this park. Initially, I was a little worried that this would mean chaos, but actually it seems like the good type of controlled chaos that is appropriate at a dog park.

Perhaps best of all, he comes home from the park absolutely knackered. Comatose, even. Which gives me time to do my stuff… like write about him!