‘Deliriously happy ending’ for lost dog
Lassie made it home. And now, so has Sparky — more than four months after the dog ran off in Evanston.
His owner’s desperate plea to find his Cavalier King Charles Spaniel was splayed out in a large white sign on his Asbury Street front lawn in Evanston. He was reunited this week with Sparky after more than four months of searching throughout the north suburb and Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood, where Sparky was finally found — miles from his home.
“This has a deliriously happy ending,” said Chuck Duff, a Thai massage teacher who lives alone with Sparky. “He’s just an adorable little creature. He loves everybody and comes up and sits on your lap.”
Scared by an April 14 storm that blew Duff’s backyard gate open, the uncollared Sparky headed south. A woman with six children found him at Howard and Western, about a mile from Duff’s home but couldn’t keep him because of her large family.
She passed him to her friends, the Serrano family, owners of Snappy Cleaners, 5870 N. Lincoln.
The Serranos had Sparky scanned for a chip, but he didn’t have one, Carolina Serrano said. They took him to two shelters, where representatives said they couldn’t take the dog because the Serranos didn’t own him. They approached the City of Chicago but decided not to leave Sparky there after learning he would be euthanized if an owner didn’t quickly come forward.
They named him Firulais — “It’s kind of a funny name,” Serrano said — and let him spend his days at the cleaners and his nights with their 7-year-old daughter.
Three weeks ago, Duff got a tip that the dog was in Edgewater. He walked the neighborhood’s streets morning and night, papering public spaces with fliers. Three days ago, Serrano saw a flyer and called Duff.
“He was so cute, I miss him,” Serrano said, adding that her daughter cried for more than 90 minutes when they told her Firulais was really Sparky and would be returning to Evanston. “I’m happy we found the owner so [the dog] can be with him.”
Duff hopes to connect the Serranos with a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel rescue organization, so their own little dog can bring lapdog love into their lives again.
“He’s just a wonderful, gentle breed,” he said. “Just so gentle and adorable.” Insurance, and the Lake County Sheriff ’s office gathered in farmer Frank Wunderink’s Shelby cornfield underneath the massive irrigation system to talk about technology designed to catch copper thieves in the act.
Todd Wottring, district sales manager for Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance, said the rising price of scrap metal has spurred thieves to try to find copper anywhere they can, and one of those places is farm irrigation systems.
The system works by detecting the moment the copper wiring in a pivot irrigator is cut or tampered with and then sends alerts via text, email and telephone to the farmer and sheriff ’s office.
Wunderink said one of his farms was targeted by thieves two times in spring 2011. They made off with the wiring and left thousands in damages in their wake. Wunderink said he had enough and installed the Netirrigate system on his farms.
“Then last fall in November in the middle of the night I got a call,” Wunderink said.
He grabbed his flashlight, drove six miles to the farm and caught two people stripping the copper wiring from his irrigation system red-handed.
“I held one of them at gunpoint, the other one got away,” Wunderink said. The sheriff ’s department arrested the second thief a few weeks later. The men were prosecuted. Wunderink said he repaired the damaged wiring instead of filing yet another $10,000 insurance claim.