[Crossfire Bulldogs]

A cancer patient lost his dog during Hurricane Katrina, but a Hallandale Beach policewoman made his one Christmas wish come true.

BY DONNA GEHRKE-WHITE MiamiHerald

Dennis Lewis lost his home near New Orleans this summer and he is battling leukemia. But he got one great Christmas present: After a three-month cross-country search, his beloved Crystal Blue, a blue-eyed Louisiana hound, was found in Hollywood.

With help from the Humane Society of Broward County, Lewis, 50, wearing gloves and a mask to ward off germs that could kill him in his weakened state, was able to wrap his arms around 80-pound Crystal Blue -- just days before undergoing a bone marrow transplant.

''That made his Christmas,'' his wife, Terry, said in a telephone interview from St. Louis, Mo., where Lewis is undergoing treatment. ``He was grieving for her because she's his baby. When I first told him we had found her he started crying.''

It has been a long journey for both man and dog.

A TERRIBLE GOODBYE

When Katrina struck the Gulf in August, the Lewises, who lived in St. Bernard Parish near New Orleans, were in Arkansas; Dennis was receiving chemotherapy.

Their son, Damian Asevedo, 26, took the couple's three Catahoula leopard dogs -- a breed known for its herding, hunting and spotted coats -- to stay during the hurricane with a cousin who had dogs and lived on higher ground.

When the city flooded, Asevedo and his cousin took the dogs -- Dakota, Cheyenne and Crystal Blue -- to the highest point on a levee to wait for help with others.

Rescuers on a barge found them -- but wouldn't take such large dogs.
''We had been through so much to keep the dogs alive and then . . .'' Asevedo paused, his voice breaking in a telephone interview from Lafayette, La., where he is now living with his wife, 5-year-old daughter and twin baby boys. ``I had to make the decision to leave. I had a family or otherwise I would have stayed with the dogs.''
Frantically, he and other family members began searching for the pets. Terry traveled to Louisiana to comb makeshift shelters, but the dogs were nowhere to be found.

She bought a laptop and started scouring lost-pet websites and e-mailing the dogs' picture to shelters around the country.

BLUE RESCUE

In the meantime, the Humane Society of Broward County had sent staffers to Louisiana to help out. They brought 400 pets to South Florida for adoption.

Melanie Marchese, a Hallandale Beach police officer, was captivated by one dog's aquamarine eyes.

Kisses from the pooch clinched it. Marchese took her home, named her Nola and spoiled her with evening treats.

Three months later, it was those same blue eyes that took Nola away.

A volunteer trying to help a desperate Terry Lewis e-mailed a blurry picture of Crystal Blue to Fort Lauderdale: Had anyone seen her?
The Broward society has received hundreds of such messages from Gulf families looking for their pets. Not one had resulted in a reunion.
Cherie Wachter, spokesman for the Humane Society, had a hunch that Marchese's Nola might be Crystal Blue.
A tipoff: the eyes.

''They were so blazing blue,'' she said.

When Wachter asked for more information, Lewis sent the number of a microchip implant in the dog's shoulder.

When the dog first arrived in Florida, no chip was found. But a second exam determined the chip had migrated to the dog's tailbone area.
''I was bawling and I think everybody else was crying,'' said Marchese, who could have asserted her right to the dog because the adoption was more than 30 days old. She chose not to.

The dog was going home.

In St. Louis, undergoing the draining process of preparing for a bone marrow transplant, Dennis Lewis was buoyed by the prospect of being reunited with his dog.

The Humane Society of Broward County paid $289 to fly Crystal Blue to St. Louis. The reunion took place a little more than a week before the transplant.

It is the second of their three dogs they have managed to relocate. The other recovered Catahoula, Dakota, had been taken to Minnesota.

BEST PRESENT EVER

Today, Lewis is recuperating, in and out of consciousness. But, he tells his wife, finding Crystal Blue ``is the best Christmas present I ever got.''

Marchese is happy she helped out the Lewises -- but still cries at losing Nola.

Her boyfriend, Hallandale Police Sgt. Paul Winters, had asked the Humane Society if there was another Catahoula.

And, this being the season of miracles, the Society had just received a 5-month-old Catahoula puppy from a shelter in Port St. Lucie. He, too, had those unusual blue eyes.

''I named him Cajun -- after Louisiana,'' Marchese said.