Day two of our fantasy weekend in Long Beach ended up bringing us into contact with one of the all-time alphas in our doggie park experiences up until now - Huntington Beach Dog Beach, known as "One Mile Of Dog Heaven". This is an apt title, even though it happens to be in degenerate Orange County.

Originally, I booked a hotel in Long Beach because I saw in my book that Long Beach had the only off-leash dog beach area in all of LA County (a major oversight, but I digress.) We stayed in downtown, near the QEII and the port. With the nice weather and such, it was pretty excellent. As a train nerd, I would love to come back and see the port and the awesome Alameda Trench, but indeed, that will have to wait til another day, for this visit was by the perros, for the perros.

After a leisurely, and pleasant, cruise down Ocean Blvd, we made it to Belmont Beach and found the Dog Zone. It turned out to be quite a bit of fun, with many fun doggies out and about. Consistent with LA's total dissing of the with-dog set, this only dog-friendly beach is really just a small square along the longer beach. It really was no bigger than an average-sized doggie park. Since my doggie doesn't go in the water, it didn't give us a ton of reason to go and visit again since if one walks along the water for more than 5 minutes, they reach the end of the dog area.

It wasn't until later, when we got to the Huntington Beach Dog Beach that we hit a real stretch of dog paradise. It was upon getting word of Dog Beach from some cool people at Long Beach Dog Park that we even became aware of this piece of paradise, so my intent isn't to diss Long Beach, but they could learn from Orange County on how to make up a dog heaven properly.

Booms has bad knees, and the only time I see him really enjoy running is when he is on sand. Given the amount of sand available to us at Dog Beach, the running started almost the instant we hit the sand. The kid had an awesome time.

Not only was the sand and surf chi-friendly, we ran into many excellent little doggies, including a nice pair of chis!

We capped of our SoCal visit with a walk around West Hollywood, including a visit to a nice doggie boutique. The real capper to the holiday weekend though was our visit to the first Chihuahua Meetup of 2010 - one that was (thankfully) well-attended.

Boomie has never really had it so good. A weekend in the warm SoCal sun capped off with an aggregation of dozens of game Chihuahuas back on home turf. I admit it wasn't just the kid who had a good time, I too had myself a lovely time. I am 100% partial to SoCal weather, and finally having a dog gives me a good excuse to get out in it. I am partial to NorCal for lifestyle reasons, but if SoCal ever civilizes itself and decides it prefers to stop being a nasty suburb designed for the indulgence of whitey's bad living, I would surely groove on being down there. Not sure that is coming any time soon.

Til now, we will mostly make our rounds up North. Closer to home, we found another new pursuit to keep us busy over the winter - flyball. Chihuahuas don't usually play, but it is something other doggies seem to love. I have to admit, a team sport for dogs seems an odd idea, until you actually see them in action. I am unlikely to get a second dog, but if I do, I might try to find one who would be inclined to play. A league plays to the north of SF/Oakland, and I am gonna try to talk one of my coworkers with a more play-inclined breed into getting her doggie into Flyball. It would be most excellent, especially if I can pack it into long dog-pleasing weekends like the one we kicked off the 2010 with.