Lost and hound in New York
THIS POOCH won’t need to be walked for at least a week.
A Brooklyn dog named Cash made a dash for it Friday morning and went on a meandering tour of the city that ended more than six hours later in Chelsea, the dog’s owner said.
“Cash wanted a big adventure,” a relieved Gwen Wunderlich said, recounting her 6-yearold Chow Chow mix’s journey.
The gentle-eyed dog with the golden coat broke free from his dog walker near Tillary and Gold Sts. in downtown Brooklyn about 7 a.m.
Within a few moments, calls were being made to the city’s 911 system about Cash wandering along the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian path, Wunderlich said.
“Everyone was trying to get him,” Wunderlich, 41, said. “People were stopping their cars. There was even a construction worker who took off his belt and tried to get Cash with it.”
Wunderlich, of the public relations firm Wunderlich Kaplan Communications, was on a JetBlue flight leaving LaGuardia Airport when her dog walker gave her the bad news.
Even though the pilot had already left the gate, she convinced them to go back and let her off so she could join the search, she said.
“I made them pull back to the gate,” she said. “Within minutes of Cash being lost we had it up on Facebook and everyone was spreading the word, looking for him.”
“My dog Cash is lost,” Wunderlich wrote in one of her early posts. “Please help spread the word and go find him!!!”
But by the time she got back to Brooklyn, Cash’s adventure was well under way.
Throughout the morning, Wunderlich’s friends and fellow dog lovers spotted Cash in lower Manhattan and on the FDR Drive.
By 11 a.m., Cash was spotted on the Upper East Side, resting under a bench at a dog run at Peter Detmold Park on E. 50th St. and First Ave.
“A park worker tried to get him, but he ran off,” Wunderlich said.
Wunderlich then received multiple reports of Cash running west on 52nd St., apparently on his way to Hell’s Kitchen.
“Every single person I talked to said that they loved that dog and wanted to grab him for me,” said Wunderlich.
At about 1:30 p.m., six and a half hours and roughly 7 miles from where he disappeared — on a direct route — Cash wandered into a deli near the corner of Eighth Ave. and 18th St., walked behind the counter and sat down.
The deli clerk called police, who finally corralled the carefree canine with the help of the Animal Care Center of New York City.
“He’s in a cage right now,” Wunderlich said. “When I got there, he came up and kissed me and I picked him up and hugged him.”
Cash may have been looking for love when he wandered off. The roaming Romeo was never neutered, Wunderlich said.
After his walk — and a night at an Animal Care Center on 110th St. — he will be fixed, she said.
“They’re going to neuter and microchip him,” Wunderlich said, relieved that the adventure is over. “I’m picking him up (Saturday).”