Prized Westminster hound flees cage

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Jil Walton, owner of whippet Vivi (top), was distraught after dog escaped before it could be put on a plane to L.A.
An award-winning pooch from the Westminster Kennel Club show bolted from her travel cage yesterday as she was being loaded onto a California-bound plane - and vanished into the marshes around Kennedy Airport.
Vivi, a 3-year-old brown-and-white whippet that canine connoisseurs say could be worth more than $50,000, was still a stray as of last night, despite a day-long search by Port Authority police in SUVs, a helicopter and a boat.

Distraught owner Jil Walton, 39, said she feared for Vivi's life.

"When it's cold she's not happy," Walton said. "She's a skinny little thing and I don't know if she'll make it. That's what's killing me."

"God," she said ruefully, "I want this dog back."

Walton said she'd "consider" a reward for Vivi's return, but didn't name a figure.

Vivi, whose formal moniker is Ch Bohem C'est La Vie, won an Award of Merit at the Westminster show held at Madison Square Garden on Monday and Tuesday.

Walton was taking her back to Los Angeles on the 11:55 a.m. Delta flight when disaster struck.

"I was sitting on the plane waiting with my little tag to tell me she was on too, then they pulled me off and told me Vivi was lost. Somehow she got out of her kennel."

Walton said she personally put Vivi in her traveling cage, which has a keyless lock, and believed she properly secured it.

"You have to mess with the lock, twist it for her to get out," she said.

Walton said she sent her fianc?©e back to L.A. and stayed behind with her sister "because I was sure we'd find Vivi right away."

Port Authority cops rode Walton around the airport and surrounding areas while she called out the dog's name with a bullhorn.

When that didn't work, searchers went out in full force.

"To me, the police are doing the best they can do," Walton said.

A whippet, which looks like a mini-greyhound, can motor at 25 mph and cut like a football running back.

If you see her, woo her, she said. "Vivi loves people and she'll come," Walton said.

Walton said Vivi's disappearance came after she showed real improvement over last year's "horrible" performance at Westminster.

Anyone with information about Vivi is asked to call Port Authority police at (718) 244-8725.

With Carrie Melago

Originally published on February 16, 2006