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Family searches for missing Chip

The dog bolted out of the car after an auto accident on U.S. 19 and hasn't been seen since.

By SHEELA RAMAN
Published September 21, 2006

After a crash on U.S. 19 that filled her car with smoke, Kim Dannenberg flung open a door get her 5-year-old daughter, Rachel, to safety.

But when she did, another member of the family disappeared.

Dannenberg's beloved whippet, Chip, dashed out of the open door and vanished Tuesday afternoon.

"He is our first-born," Dannenberg says of Chip, who is 6 - a year older than her daughter.

Now Dannenberg, 41, can hardly hold back her tears when talking about Chip, a purebred whippet.

"It was a Sophie's Choice moment," she said. "I saw him squirm around my legs, but I had to take care of Rachel first."

To Rachel Dannenberg, losing Chip has been like losing a brother. They play together and watch cartoons. Rachel reads to Chip and tells her parents when he is hungry.

Neither mother nor daughter was seriously injured when Dannenberg rear-ended a PSTA bus on U.S. 19 N in Tarpon Springs Tuesday afternoon, though Rachel has red seat belt burns on her neck.

When Kim's husband, Rand Dannenberg, 39, returned that day from work at Eclipse Energy Systems in St. Petersburg, it was storming outside. Still, he searched. He climbed fences and combed wooded areas in the dark. He checked every housing complex near the scene of the accident. When he came home soaking wet and empty-handed, he lay himself down on Chip's bed, said Kim Dannenberg.

The Dannenbergs paid $400 for Chip, which is slightly under the normal price range of $500 to $800 for the breed.

Whippets are fast, reaching up to 35 mph for short distances. Chip may have the ability to travel far, but Dannenberg doubts he has.

"Chip's a couch potato" whose favorite show is SpongeBob SquarePants, she said. "He's not used to lightning and thunder and rain. He sleeps under the covers."

Rachel has pulled Chip's bed close to the door of her family's home, hoping it will coax Chip to walk right in. She has drawn her own portraits of Chip to use as fliers, but the family plans to distribute fliers with color photographs to spread the word about their missing pet, Kim Dannenberg said.

"I just hope that somebody has found him," she said, through tears.

In a cruel twist, Chip disappeared after the family took great pains to avoid putting him on a plane out of fear for his safety.

When she moved from Newbury Park, Calif., to Palm Harbor three weeks ago, Dannenberg refused to bring Chip on the plane with her.

She did not want to run the risk that Chip might suffer the fate that befell another whippet earlier this year, she said.

After competing in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in February, a whippet named Vivi escaped from her crate while being loaded onto an airplane at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

To protect Chip from such a fate, Dannenberg had her father and stepmother, who live in Citrus Springs in Marion County, fly to California and drive Chip back to Florida.

"We drove 600 miles a day," said her stepmother, Gloria Greenwood, 73.

Still, the worst has happened.

"We miss him so much," said Greenwood. "He can't defend himself."

IF YOU FIND CHIP

Call Kim Dannenberg at (805) 490-3232.

[Last modified September 20, 2006, 22:55:56]