SANTA ANA, CALIF. ? So the dancers have a radio on the driveway and warm clothes on their backs and several leashes.

Leashes?

Yeah, leashes.

Plus some little hats and at least one very apropos poodle skirt and some bright shoes.

Patty Wiedeman surveys all this, twiddles with her boom box, and decides it’s time.

She presses a button. The air fills with a peppy version of “Jingle Bell Rock.”

“Can we have the whole sidewalk?” she asks before counting off the beat.

“Five, six, seven, eight …”

Then, on a cool suburban night, with a grapefruit moon in the sky, the dancing begins.

Couples move in tandem, gliding a few steps up and down a driveway. Some keep time with the music; some can’t. Just like any other dancers.

There’s just one difference, and it’s rather large — these are people dancing with their dogs.

A lady and her Doberman gaze into each other’s eyes. Another lady smiles warmly at her French bulldog, who happens to be wearing a tutu.

Pleasure of dancing

The pleasure of dancing, whatever it may be, is had. Connections are made in a semi-real bubble of music.

And any line that might separate humans and animals gets erased a bit with each dog-dancing step and twirl and dip.

“It’s a great way to keep the dog engaged and focused,” Wiedeman says between dances, sneaking a glance at her bald dance partner, a Chinese crested named Putter.

“They don’t get bored.”

It’s called (by nonaficionados, anyway) dog dancing. And in the small but intense world of people who like to perform in public with hounds, it’s huge.

There are dog-dancing clubs (the local club is called Shadow Dancers) and dog-dancing Web sites (Musical Dog Sport Assn., among others).

Wiedeman, who teaches dog dancing at the Jump Start Dog Sports training school in Yorba Linda, Calif., performs with Putter at least once a month, usually at nursing homes and dog shows. This month, Weideman and others who train with her in Brea are slated to appear on television, on a segment of the Animal Planet show “Beverly Hills Vet,” though details are vague and cancellation sounds possible.

Correct terminology

There are dog-dancing contests, dog-dancing seminars, dog-dancing disco CDs.

Yet, for all that, dog dancers can seem a bit tense, as if they have to defend their preferred method of dog bonding.

Refer once too often to “dog dancing” in front of Wiedeman, and you’ll be corrected.

“Freestyle,” she says, sighing slightly.

“The correct term is dog freestyle.

“Of course, you’re going to call it whatever you want.”

True.

Dog freestyle somehow doesn’t capture the spirit of Wiedeman’s student, who likes to wear a 1920s-style bathing suit when she dances with her dog, a sheltie, whom she dresses in a similar get-up.

Thinking of music

And dog dancing, not dog freestyle, is what they wanted to see last year at a Super Bowl party for various football executives and players and their wives. “They didn’t know dogs could dance,” Wiedeman says, recounting the night.

“And the jewelry was to die for; you should have seen it.”

And freestyle doesn’t quite explain why Wiedeman, a sane woman who lives in Placentia, Calif., spends so much of her drive time thinking about the music some dogs she knows might want to dance to.

“It just comes to me. I can see the dog walking to the music. I can see the Doberman’s stride or a (Newfoundland) walking in my mind’s eye, and I just match them up to music.

“What better thing to do in traffic in Los Angeles? Everybody on the freeway is angry except me.”