Next Step: Vivi’s Law

After almost a year and a half, the hunt for Vivi moves from a search & rescue operation to the inspiration for a movement:

Vivi, the champion whippet, has been missing in Queens for almost 1-1/2 years and her heartbroken volunteers are now mounting a campaign to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

Organized as the Vivi Crusade, a handful of dedicated animal lovers want the airlines to be more responsive to shipped dogs and cats, which they say are being treated like luggage instead of living, breathing creatures. To further their cause, the volunteers have devised a questionnaire to gather information from across the country on airline incidents of injured, killed, misplaced or lost pets.

Bonnie Folz, of Howard Beach, who served as search coordinator during the active stages of looking for Vivi, is co-founder of the new Vivi Crusade.

“We know there are problems (with the airlines) and we are looking for solutions,” she said. “We want to work with the airlines; we don’t want it to be one-sided.”

. . .

Despite the efforts of about a dozen hard-core volunteers, Vivi was never found.

“I think she was out there,” Folz said, “and I hope someone has her and doesn’t realize who she is and is taking good care of her.”

Folz is realistic enough to know that Vivi could have been hit by a car and died and there will never be any resolution.

“If we could just know she’s okay,” she said. “We haven’t had a sighting in almost a year.”

Vivi’s California owners were astounded with the level of commitment by the volunteers, who actively searched for the dog for so long. Aging posters of the whippet still can be found throughout the borough.

“I don’t know if we’d do anything different,” Folz said. “It was a learning experience.”

Despite their disappointment in not recovering Vivi, volunteers were able to rescue 40 dogs in New York City and 20 out of town as a result of the attention brought by the whippet’s disappearance.

Whippets are particularly difficut to recover because they become feral very quickly, go into a survival mode and run extremely fast. They are also excellent hunters.

Trying to turn the experience into a positive, Folz is soldiering on in hopes that other pets won’t meet the same fate as Vivi.

“We are starting off with educating the public and the airlines,” she said, “and improving what’s already in place. We don’t want to go in there like gangbusters.”

She believes reporting incidents of lost, injured or killed pets and proper training of airline employees and pet owners are the key. One possibility is designing a better crate that can withstand rough handling. At this time, Folz noted, it is up to the pet owners to additionally secure crates on their own, even if the cages have locks.

She added that there seems to be no real tracking done on the crates in transit. Although airlines are required by law to report if an animal is not recovered, other cases, where a pet goes to the wrong airport or is lost temporarily are not reported.

“These are not pieces of luggage,” she added. “The airlines must have compassion for living beings.”

Last year, Delta considered Vivi missing baggage and reimbursed one of the owners $2,800.

See also: Vivi the Whippet.