Internet Is Dog’s Best Friend : Computer Users Find Home for Collie, Relay Him to Anaheim

The urgent e-mail message flashed out on computer screens across the nation that Kavik, a tricolor collie so badly abused that his master was sent to jail, would surely die in a Kansas pound unless somebody helped.

His only hope was the Internet posting from a dog-loving computer user in Lawrence, Kan., and an electronic web of 84 strangers who run the international CUR--the Canine Underground Railroad.

Thus began a journey that delivered Kavik, just days from death, to a good home and unfamiliar kindness halfway across the country in Anaheim, with a new owner who had only the slightest grasp of cyberspeak.

Shari Hartmann, director of graduate studies at Chapman University, was virtually lost in cyberspace when she stumbled upon the computer posting for somebody to save 4-year-old Kavik.

“I read the posting and I just couldn’t stand the thought that after all that abuse they were going to euthanize him,” she said. “He had been abused so long I couldn’t let his end be tragic.”

The rare out-of-state adoption was a sweet--and highly unconventional--ending to years of terrible abuse and a wait on dog death row.

Things couldn’t have looked worse for Kavik when Renee Harris of the Lawrence Humane Society found him chained to a trailer-park fence last year.

He was in heat distress, without water, malnourished and weighing 38 pounds instead of the 70 pounds his frame demanded. His coat was a matted mess of fur. Kavik’s chain had cut into his neck, causing deep sores that were home to maggots and swarms of flies.

“We rushed him to the vet,” Harris said. “His temperature was off the thermometer. We filed a police report at that time. . . . He had been through so much, he had had a horrible life.”

The Humane Society’s directors won custody of the collie and gave him a home in their kennel while they sought to have the owner prosecuted for cruelty. Eventually, the owner was sentenced to a short time behind bars and two years’ probation, according to Harris.

A stay at the kennel was usually six weeks, Harris said, but they would keep Kavik for a year, kennel employees and board members alike growing more attached to the reserved dog with a delicate face and tan eyebrows and cheeks.

Finally, time was running out and the collie was perhaps days from being euthanized, Harris said.

“We really wanted to place him,” she added. “We placed ads in the newspapers. We just couldn’t find anyone.”

Meanwhile, at her university office, Hartmann was gingerly finding her way through the vast computer world, not knowing exactly what she’d find and a little worried about losing her way.

Far from being a computer nerd, Hartmann was just learning the system of bulletin boards, e-mails and webs that have spawned millions of techno-junkies around the world.

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“I still get lost in cyberspace,” Hartmann said with a laugh. “I would find all these neat places to go and I’d never be able to find my way back.”

Rummaging through the bulletin boards related to university topics, she then decided to tap into a category called “Collie.” Hartmann wanted tips on raising the two dogs she and her husband, James, had rescued the previous year.

She was intrigued by an electronic conversation--called a posting--among Kansas resident Elizabeth B. Naime and others about “line brushing,” a tedious but apparently effective method of dog grooming.

In her posting, Naime had digressed from dog brushing long enough to tell of Kavik’s plight, which she learned about from Humane Society officials.

Naime is a member of CUR, whose 84 members across the United States and Canada help rescue dogs via the Internet. It couldn’t immediately be learned when CUR was established or how many canines have been saved.

Hartmann messaged Naime that she’d take Kavik.

E-mail flew furiously as details were worked out among Hartmann, Naime and the Lawrence Humane Society, which does not ordinarily allow out-of-state adoptions. A special meeting of the seven-member board of directors was called late in May and the decision was unanimous: Kavik could move to Anaheim.

“In our business, we get a lot of people who are very deceiving,” Harris said. “This was one case where I felt we needed to trust somebody.”

Naime and Hartmann worked out logistics for the trip through the Web, finding no dearth of volunteers.

Ultimately, six people volunteered to drive the collie on stretches of the 1,540-mile trek to Anaheim.

“Shari, I think I could help with Kavik’s CUR run,” said a typical posting, complete with the odd symbols that illustrate cyberspeak. This missive came from Maren Eliason: “I’m in central Oklahoma and would be willing to either go get him in Lawrence and bring him back here or take him from here west. Whatever’s needed most. :) Just keep me posted.”

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By the first week of June, details were set and runners were ready to drive their “legs.”

Except for a vehicle breakdown in New Mexico, Kavik’s four-day journey went smoothly, Hartmann said.

Traveling a circuitous route west, Kavik went through six CUR stations from Lawrence to Nebraska and on to Colorado. Circumstances sent him to a Rottweiler show with a runner from Albuquerque, N.M., and from there he went to Tempe, Ariz., where Shari Hartmann, her husband and two excited daughters waited for him at a motel.

“That was the first time I saw him,” Hartmann said. “He was gorgeous!”

Kavik is still shy of people and conditioned by kennel routines, curling under the kitchen table until he thinks it’s play time.

But the dog is slowly coming around, his new family said, venturing briefly into other rooms and even playing with his adopted collie siblings, Mitzi and Dusty.

Both he and his new owners have new friends all over the world via the Internet.

“I really feel like I have a new circle of friends,” Hartmann said. “It’s really strange knowing you wouldn’t know them if you ran into them--and knowing I probably never will meet them.”

And she is not alone in her awe of the powers of technology. The members of the Lawrence Humane Society also perk their ears up.

“It certainly made me start thinking about the Internet,” said Harris of Kavik’s tale. “It’s a good, happy story.”

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Incredible Journey An Internet bulletin board message about an abused dog in Kansas needing a ride to its new home in Anaheim led six strangers to drive legs of the 1,540- mile trip. The route Kavik the collie took: Start: Lawrence Lincoln Scottsbluff Longmont Louisville Albuquerque Tempe: Owner pick up pooch Anaheim: New home. Source: Shari Hartmann