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The small dog area at the Sepulveda Basin Off-Leash Dog Park in Encino at dusk.
Photo by Benjamin Gottlieb.
Genia Ahranian doesn’t know what she would do without her daily trips to the dog park.
“I retired years ago,” Ahranian says, sitting contently with her red poodle named Dousha on her lap under a canopy of trees in the San Fernando Valley. The name, she says, means “sweet face” in Russian slang.
“The moment you cross the gates, you enter another world. I call this place paradise.”
Genia Ahranian and her red poodle Dousha sitting together at the Sepulveda Basin Off-Leash Dog Park in Encino. Photo by Benjamin Gottlieb.