The Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden spends its mornings filled with dogs.

Beginning in May 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic forced communities into lockdown, community member Keith Wilson and his Coton de Tulear named Bucky, walked around campus every day to stay active.

“I grew up on campus here at UCLA,” Wilson said. “My parents have had the same house behind sorority row since 1964, so I used their 50-acre backyard – called UCLA – as my place to go escape from this lockdown.”

Running into an old neighbor while walking through campus, Wilson’s morning walk gradually became a meet-up time for him and the fellow dog walkers he would encounter on campus, he said.

“We became regulars up at Royce Hall, so when three dogs turned into five, turned into 10, turned into 20 … we moved it from Royce Hall to the hill to the left of Janss Steps,” he said.

On a Thursday morning, dogs ran around, their owners socializing and cleaning up after them. An Australian cattle dog and doodle played fetch, shared snacks and students pet the dogs.

The newfound group created a community for people in the area, which spread via word of mouth, Wilson added.

“All the people coming are coming from Bel Air, (Pacific) Palisades, Brentwood, Santa Monica, Westwood, Beverly Hills and as far as Toluca Lake, or even Manhattan Beach,” he said.

The impromptu group even adopted a name – the “Bucky Bunch” – after Wilson’s dog, and attracted upwards of 50 dogs every weekend, Wilson said. At the group’s peak in 2022, Wilson had a roster of 375 dogs that would regularly attend, he added.

Wilson said he provided water for both owners and dogs, and also deejayed events for the group. The community that formed grew tighter as the events became weekly throughout the pandemic and in the months after, he added.

The community showed its strength when Wilson’s wife died from cancer in June 2022, Wilson said. Together, the group raised $1,800 worth of GrubHub gift cards to purchase meals for Wilson’s family while they grieved.

“It became so much more than just a community about dogs,” Wilson said.

The group also sought to provide the opportunity to network and find love, resulting in members jokingly calling the meetings “Puppy LinkedIn” and “Puppy Tinder,” Wilson said.

Since the groups peak in 2022, it has splintered off into separate groups, one of which now meets daily in the Sculpture Garden.

Bucky Bunch regular Eve Beerman said she and her dog Sadie have been going to the weekly dog socials since the pandemic. Because of the hilly landscape, though, Eve and some other owners decided to migrate to the flatter terrain of the Murphy Sculpture Garden, she said.

A smaller community has now formed among those who meet every morning in the garden, Beerman added.

“We’ve been here for one another, and even during COVID and all that stuff, and it’s just a nice place to be,” she said. “We sort of can forget what’s going on in the world for a moment, and then we go back to our lives.”

Beerman added that they’ve also been able to form relationships with both students and groundskeepers in the gardens, especially when students ask to pet Sadie.

Brenda Freiberg, Beerman’s longtime friend and a Westwood resident, said she and her Australian cattle dog Meeka have had a connection to the Murphy Sculpture Garden since long before she started walking Meeka there in the mornings, Freiberg said.

Freiberg’s mother-in-law, Mary E. Freiberg – a former member of the UCLA Arts Council – was involved in the formation of the garden and the Tete Heroique, or “Heroic Head,” sculpture by Aristide Maillol is dedicated to her, Freiberg said. As a result, she was always aware of the serenity of the garden long before she began bringing her dog, she said.

Nonetheless, Freiberg said she soon found herself developing new relationships with others who walked their dogs on campus.

“Over time, we’ve become friends and probably expanded our world because we wouldn’t have met otherwise,” she said.

Freiberg said she has tried going to other dog parks but said other communities cannot match the “anchoring” nature of the dog-walking groups on the UCLA campus. Wilson added that the dog-walking community adds to UCLA’s community.

“There was everything you’d see in Shakespeare on that hill,” Wilson said.