Every morning at seven, rain or shine (mostly shine; it's Los Angeles), a certain group of people and a certain group of dogs show up at the little fenced dog run in the park down the street from my apartment. The people drink coffee out of travel mugs and talk about nothing. The dogs run in a large circle for forty-five minutes for reasons known only to dogs. Then everybody goes to work.

I've been one of these people since April. This page is about them, and the dogs, and how the whole thing works. It started because I wanted to type up the rules so we could tape them to the gate. It got longer.

A note: I've used first names for the people and full names for the dogs, because the dogs are the ones with the reputations. Everybody's read this and said okay. Except the dogs, who can't read, but who would say okay if they could, because they're dogs.

In order of who gets there first, which is a very serious competition that nobody admits to.

Weekend irregulars: a rotating cast of about a dozen more, including a Great Dane named Tiny (of course), a pair of pugs whose names I keep getting backwards, and a very serious German shepherd named Frau Schmidt who comes on Saturdays with a very serious man named Karl. All welcome. All rule-abiding. Mostly.

The city has an official sign with official rules. These are the unofficial ones, which are the ones that actually matter, worked out over a lot of mornings by the people above. Walter laminated them.

1. Pick up. Every time. Right away. There are bags at the gate; if the bags are out, tell Walter, and use your own until then. There is no such thing as "I'll get it on the way out." You will not get it on the way out. Nobody has ever gotten it on the way out.
2. Watch your dog. Not your newspaper, not your book, not the other people. Your dog. Priya reads and watches Sadie at the same time, and Priya is a professional; do not attempt this. If you can't see your dog, you can't stop your dog.
3. No food inside the fence. No treats, no breakfast burritos, no coffee cake. Denise is the one exception, for Rocket's recall, and she's careful about it. Food inside the fence is how you get a fight, and the dogs get into it too.
4. Close the gate. Both gates. It's a double gate for a reason. Ray's sign is right there. Read Ray's sign.
5. Know when to leave. If your dog is having a bad morning (growly, humpy, guarding the ball, picking on the new guy), take him home. It's not a judgment. Every dog has a bad morning. Biscuit's was a Tuesday in June. We left. We came back Wednesday. Nobody mentioned it.
6. New dogs come in slowly. Bring a new dog on a weekday, not a Saturday, and let the regulars come sniff through the fence first. Mr. Peabody will receive them. Let him.
7. No puppies under four months (they need all their shots first; ask your vet) and no dogs in heat. That second one is a city rule too, and it's a good one.
8. Kids stay on the bench. The park is for the dogs. A running kid looks, to a dog, exactly like a thing to chase. Walter's grandson knows this. Be like Walter's grandson.
9. Break it up fast, and don't grab collars. If two dogs get into it, make noise, get between them with your body if you safely can, and grab back legs, not collars. Then both dogs go home for the day. No blame. We've had to do this three times all year, which for a park this size is not bad.
10. Fill the water. If the bowls are low, the hose is by the storage box. Which is the whole reason for the fountain, below.

Here's the situation. The dog park has water: a hose, coiled by a storage box, that Walter unlocks, and three metal bowls that get filled from it. It works fine at 7 a.m. when Walter is there. It doesn't work at 3 p.m. when Walter isn't, and the bowls have been dry, and in August it was 98 degrees.

What we want is a real drinking fountain inside the fence, the kind with the people spout on top and the dog bowl at the bottom, hooked up to the same line the hose is on. The parks department says they can do it if the neighborhood raises the money for the fountain itself and the plumbing. Barbara wrote the letter (see above; the letter was very good), and in August we got the answer: about $1,100, all in.

Where we are: $412 as of September 25.

Coming up:

• Bake sale, Saturday October 9, 8 a.m. to noon, at the park gate. Ellen is running it. Human baked goods on one table, dog biscuits (Denise's recipe, peanut butter and oats) on the other. Please label which is which; last time there was confusion. Bring something to sell or bring money to buy it.
• The Halloween dog costume walk, Sunday October 31, 10 a.m. $5 to enter, prizes donated by the pet supply store on the boulevard. Mr. Peabody will be a hot dog. This was not his idea.
• Ray's portraits continue. E-mail me and I'll pass it on. Bring a photo of the dog, or bring the dog and he'll sketch at the bench.

If we keep this up, the parks department says they can put the fountain in over the winter, and by next summer nobody's dog is going to be thirsty at 3 in the afternoon. That's the whole plan. It's a good plan.

I'll keep this short because it gets sappy and Walter will make fun of me.

I moved here from Cleveland in March for a job. I knew one person in Los Angeles, a guy from college, and he lived an hour away, which here means you never see him. I had a studio apartment, a futon, a computer and a job where everybody was nice and nobody was a friend. I ate a lot of dinners standing up. I called my mom too much. I was, and I didn't really admit this until later, about as lonely as I've ever been. There's a particular kind of quiet in a new city where nobody knows your name, and it's not a peaceful kind.

In April, on a Saturday when I couldn't stand the apartment anymore, I went to the animal shelter "just to look." You know how that goes. Biscuit was in the third kennel on the left, and she put one paw through the bars, and that was that. I did not have a plan. I had a futon and a bag of food and a dog.

The first morning I brought her to the park I stood by myself at the fence like the new kid at school. It was Ellen who came over. She said, "Is that a new one? What's her name?" and then Gus came and dropped nothing at my feet (he never drops the ball) and then Walter told me where the hose was, in a voice that suggested I'd better remember, and Denise handed me a coffee she'd bought on the way, "because I had a two-for-one," which I have since learned is not a thing, and Denise just buys two.

That was five months ago. I now know Walter's grandson's name, Marcus's schedule, which weeks Ana has Mr. Peabody and which weeks Tom does, and that Barbara's mother is doing better. I've been to Ray's birthday. I helped Priya move a couch. When my car died in July, Tom drove me to work for a week. And every morning at seven, in a city of millions where I knew one person, there are nine people who look up when I come through the gate and say, "Hey, Sam. Hey, Biscuit."

The dog park didn't save me because of the dogs. It saved me because dogs give people a reason to stand next to each other for forty-five minutes every day and talk about nothing, and if you do that long enough, it stops being nothing. If you're new somewhere and you're the kind of lonely that doesn't have a name, and you can take care of a dog: go to the shelter. Then go to the park. Stand at the fence. Somebody will come over. It'll probably be Ellen.

Breed: the shelter said "beagle mix." The vet said "hound, something." Walter says "mostly ears."
Age: about two. Birthday assigned as April 17, the day I brought her home.
Weight: 31 pounds, four of which are ears.
Likes: the circle, cheese, Mr. Peabody, burying tennis balls, the passenger seat, my pillow (not her pillow; mine).
Dislikes: baths, the vacuum, being called at the park, the mailman (a classic), and the wind chime on the neighbor's porch, which she regards as a personal enemy.
Tricks: sit, down, "go to your bed" (about 60%), and a thing where she puts her head on your knee and looks up that isn't a trick but works like one.
Photos: a whole roll, at the drugstore, being developed. When they're back I'll find somebody with a scanner (Denise says the film lab has one; Denise has everything) and put a couple up here.