Vivi's breeder Bo Bengtson addresses the question of how non-locals can help in the Vivi search:
UPDATE AS OF THURSDAY NIGHT, APRIL 6, 2006 (sent Friday)
Obviously my updates aren’t as clear as they should be. I received the following: “… We need Bo and the owners to outright tell us what they want us to do. Not the actual volunteers, by the bloggers that live out of state and want to help. … We all have a vested and emotional interest in Vivi, but we also know that she belongs to them. All we want is to help, but if we are hurting the search, we need to know that too.”
Here’s the response I sent:
I’m sorry there if there is any confusion. … What we are really concerned about are over-enthusiastic locals who want to “catch” Vivi and believe they can actually do so. As we’ve said a dozen times, that won’t work and will only serve to scare her away from the relatively safe area where she is.
The only things a local can do, other than help post flyers and distribute the Guidelines for how to act if you come across Vivi, is to sit on a bench in the park and eat their lunch – and, if Vivi should turn up, follow those Guidelines. They have been posted on both the AWC website and Denise Flaim’s blog. Print them out, read, distribute, etc. However, that will only work if you’re really experienced with feral dogs, Whippets and retrieving them. Trying to catch Vivi and failing to do so would make it even harder to ever get her again.
If you don’t live in the area, obviously “chasing” Vivi is not a problem. We appreciate very much the concern of so many hundreds (thousands?) of people around the country and abroad. If you want to help produce flyers, contact Diane Tamm at <dtamm@prodigy.net>; she is in regular contact with Honi and the rest of us. Other than that, the best thing anyone can do is offer financial assistance to “Bobbi and the Strays” (with checks marked “For Vivi” if that’s what you prefer), or to your local shelter. Vivi is incredibly lucky to have so many people care for her. My hope is that other dogs should be so fortunate.
Jil, Paul and I are of course in exactly the same situation as other concerned people around the country: since we are not on the spot there is nothing we can actually do to help get Vivi back. I always assumed that losing a dog must be a bad experience, but this has been a hundred times worse than imagined. Handling the mass of emails and calls has been an unexpected problem. We have no infrastructure to deal with all this. We all have now missed so much time from our “normal” full-time jobs that this is a serious concern, and we cannot continue to do so.
Please excuse me if I cannot express our gratitude for all the concern as well as I should. What can you say except “Thank you!” a thousand times?
That’s it. I should have added that checks made out to Bobbi and the Strays with "For Vivi" in the subject line can be mailed to 3392 Bay Front Place, Baldwin, NY 11510.
More about Delta later.
Thanks,
Bo
