It has been nearly a year since a prize-winning whippet named Vivi broke out of her cage on the tarmac of John F. Kennedy airport and bounded away. The 131st Annual Westminster Kennel Club Benched Dog Show starts today, and she hasn’t been found despite the efforts of a dozen searchers.

Among dog owners in the show, the memory of Vivi is anything but faded.

“I was just talking about her. I tell you — it’s scary,” an owner from Michigan, Bobby Bidwell, said in the lobby of the Hotel Pennsylvania. After leaving her 96-pound Otterhound, Marilyn Monroe, in the car for a minute, she realized the risk she had taken.

“I was so scared that someone was going to steal her,” Ms. Bidwell said. “I just kept thinking of the whippet.”

There are 2,628 dogs in this week’s show at Madison Square Garden, many of which were brought to New York in airplanes from cities across the country. Owners say this is the riskiest part of the trip, because it is the one time when the dogs are completely out of their control.

An owner from Port Jervis, N.Y., Kimberle Schiff, said she has adopted a new set of security measures for flying.

“I now drill holes in the sides of all my crates and we use cable straps” that have to be cut off, she said.

The organizer of a group of volunteers that has been searching for Vivi since her disappearance, Bonnie Folz, issued a 13-point bulletin to owners flying their dogs last week. The advice focused on keeping an eye on Transportation Security Administration officers, who are known to open crates after they have been secured to inspect for dangerous materials.

“TSA will come in after the fact, cut open the ties, take the dog out without the owner’s knowledge,” the husband of Vivi’s owner, Rick Patterson, said. “The airlines don’t have the kind of control you’d think they have. There needs to be better communication.”

Members of “Team Vivi” have received about 160 calls about of sightings, but they say they believe only about half of them were genuine. They have rescued more than 60 other dogs and cats that were either lost or abandoned during their search across Queens and Long Island.

“We got a call about three days ago,” a retired bus driver for handicapped children, Rosa Chile, a Vivi searcher, said. “Somebody was walking their dog. They observed a whippet, same style.”

That sighting didn’t pan out, but a frayed lead doesn’t seem to faze the searchers.

“She is always ahead of us. That’s the difficulty with whippets. They’re very, very smart,” Ms. Chile said. “I feel that I’m going to search for this dog until I find this dog. … I think somebody has her.” Meanwhile, the show will go on in Manhattan as some of the world’s most illustrious and invariably pure-bred dogs are paraded before a panel of judges. The show is second-longest continuously held sporting event, behind the Kentucky Derby, with 288,996 dogs having entered the contest between 1877 and last year.

Today, the Working, Terrier, Toy, and non-sporting breeds will be judged. Tomorrow, the Sporting, Hound, and herding breeds are in the spotlight. The Best In Show will be announced Tuesday evening. Across town, Christie’s today will host a preview of the 20 paintings in its first Dog Sale, which will take place June 22 at Rockefeller Center.

To report a sighting of Vivi call 1-877-JFKVIVI.