Pupnapping

One day last week, in Chicago's Hotel Sherman, Louis Rudginsky, a Winthrop, Mass., tire dealer, packed up to go home. With him was Kid Boots Ace, better known as Timmie, his 13-lb. Boston terrier, who had just won first prize in the Western Boston Terrier Club show. Mr. Rudginsky put his thoroughbred into a black fibre bag bearing his initials in red letters. In the hotel lobby he put the case down, stepped away a few feet to say good-by to some friends. When he stepped back case and dog were gone.

Mr. Rudginsky waited. That afternoon a man telephoned that he could have the dog back for $500. then hung up. Mr. Rudginsky reported to the police who promptly suspected a blonde woman who had been seen at the hotel. Pacing the lobby of his hotel Mr. Rudginsky exclaimed to newshawks:

"Whoever kidnapped Timmie may be a smart racketeer, but he doesn't know dogs. The dog is sick and can't live without special care. I've been giving him medicine ever since I left Boston. I have worried about this dog more than I did when my business went on the rocks and I lost $700.000 or $800,000. The dog isn't worth ten cents to whoever kidnapped him. but I wouldn't have sold him for $10.000. . . . The damn dog has something. He steals every show he enters."

Like the parent of many a kidnapped child, Mr. Rudginsky advised the snatching of the diet needed by the victim of the crime: raw meat, raw eggs, milk once a day.

Thus did the snatching of a famed dog call attention to pupnapping. That it had become a new racket was last week apparent from other reports. In Memphis police searched for a man driving an old wagon, who represented himself as a humane society officer, seized dogs, held them for ransom. In Kansas City, Alice Wolfberg missed her chow, Ching. By telephone a man demanded $10 from her, later $20. She agreed to pay but summoned police. They arrested two men who arrived to collect.

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