NEW YORK (AP) – Authorities called off their formal search for a missing show dog at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Thursday, but a spokesman said officers patrolling the area would keep their eyes open for the wayward whippet.

In the past 24 hours, “the searchers covered the entire airport property of nearly 5,000 acres but did not spot the dog,” Alan Hicks, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said at midday Thursday.

He said the dog’s owners had left the Queens airport and didn’t want to speak to the media.

The dog, a 3-year-old named Champion Bohem C’est La Vie and answering to Vivi, had won an award of merit in the annual Westminster Kennel Club show in Manhattan and apparently escaped her travel cage on the JFK tarmac as she was about to be put on a plane for the flight home to California.

Vivi’s owner, Jil Walton, of Claremont, Calif., earlier told the Daily News she believed she had secured the travel cage properly but “somehow she got out of her kennel.”

Delta Air Lines Inc. was conducting an internal investigation to determine how it happened, spokeswoman Chris Kelly said. “We are working with the customer,” she said, and would keep the findings private if so requested.

Walton and co-owner Paul Lepiane, of Ojai, Calif., canceled their flights to help search for the dog, Hicks said.

The search initially was concentrated in the marshlands of Jamaica Bay, a wildlife refuge on the airport’s southwestern side.

Delta operates from JFK’s Terminal 3, which is closest to that edge of the airport.

Hicks said a Port Authority police officer had seen the dog moving in that direction but a followup search produced nothing. “It did indicate that the dog was not stolen,” he said.

Walton told the newspaper she was worried that Vivi might not survive.

“When it’s cold she’s not happy,” Walton said. “She’s a skinny little thing, and I don’t know if she’ll make it. That’s what’s killing me.”

Vivi was said to be wearing a black wool sweater and a collar with her owner’s telephone number. She also has an inserted microchip with contact information.

More than 2,600 dogs were entered in this year’s Westminster show at Madison Square Garden, including 25 whippets, a sleek short-haired breed similar to a greyhound.

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