Animal House

As the sun dipped along with the temperature, day four of the Vivi search ended just as the others did: with no sign of the wayward whippet, whose airport escape has prompted headlines around the country.

"There is not a building on this 5,000 acres that we haven't gone through," says Carol Reisman, who, along with fellow hound breeder and AKC judge Joan Goldstein, spent today driving around JFK International Airport. "But that doesn't mean she didn't show up there two minutes later."

The latest animal communicator to weigh in on Vivi's whereabouts was Beatrice Lydecker of Portland, Ore., who said Vivi was in eyeshot of lots of yellow equipment -- not much of a narrower-downer -- and was hiding under folded boxes.

While the Port Authority has ended its formal search for the 30-pound show dog, employees of its wildlife center take the owners on daily trips to the off-limits marshland area in the hopes of spotting her.

Marcia Herman, the founding editor of Celebrating Greyhounds magazine, emails to remind that there are lots of invaluable tips for recovering a lost greyhound -- and what is a whippet by a mini-grey? -- at the Greyhound Amber Alert Forum on the Grey Talk board.

"You'll read tons of stories about greyhounds being in the wild for weeks, even months," she writes. "Lost dogs usually find 'warm' buildings such as barns. Maybe a warm hangar, in this case ..."

Among the must-reads: how to find a lost sighthound and how to prevent them from bolting in the first place.

There's already a thread devoted to Vivi on the site, wherein some fanciers bemoan the media's inability speak dogese. Just for the record, yours truly was not the reporter who referred to this best-in-show-winning bitch as "a white and brown mix."