Zach Ramaley, 10, of Lawrence, plays with a pug during the weekly meeting set up online by area pug owners through meetup.com. The group meets every Saturday at the off-leash dog park at Clinton Lake State Park.

Nadia Baraban, a freshman at Kansas University, was delighted when she became the owner of a pug named Dublin last year.

Right off, she and her husband, Brian Baraban, sought other pug owners so their dog could be socialized with his own breed.

And they found a way to do that on the Internet.

Nadia’s pug owner group at meetup.com and other online groups aren’t just a way for friendly dogs to get together for a sniff-and-frolic rendezvous. You might even say the Internet is man’s next best friend.

“I looked online for people with pugs, too, and there were almost 100 people at Meetup waiting for somebody to organize a group. So I decided to do it,” Nadia said.

The results: Those with a common passion for pugs get together Saturday afternoons to socialize among the petite pups.

Adin Van Duyne, of Lawrence, swing dances with Misha Thompson, of Lawrence, at a meeting of the KU Swing Society. The group meets Tuesdays at Ecumenical Christian Ministries, 1204 Oread Ave., and attracts some of its members through an Internet group.

“We’ve got 14 members and hope to get a lot more,” Nadia said. “It’s gone well, considering the group started up in October.”

Dog lovers aren’t the only people drawn to meetup.com. Do a Lawrence-area zip code search, and you’ll find enthusiasts meeting on a variety of hobbies and interests, such as foreign languages, goth culture and knitting.

Meetup also lists group topics in need of an organizer. In Lawrence and the Kansas City area, that includes UFO enthusiasts, electric scooter owners, singles, newly singles and all types of political parties.

And that variety of interests can be found at Yahoo Groups, too, where Misha Thompson’s KU Swing Society has gained new members enthusiastic about the old-fashioned dance style.

Adin Van Duyne, of Lawrence, swing dances with Lauren Casset, of Overland Park, at a meeting of the KU Swing Society. An online presence has helped the organization grow.

“We get new people all the time,” the KU senior says. “If it’s not people who look us up at KU, it’s people who found us at Yahoo.”

Thompson says the group, which offers lessons at 9 p.m. and open dance at 9:30 p.m. Tuesdays, can draw 15 to 35 people. And the Yahoo group also draws plenty of out-of-towners.

“(The site) has been great because it brings people who are passing through Kansas City and Lawrence,” she says. “We’ve had people from Austin, from L.A., from New York and Canada. They saw us on Yahoo.”

The group has been such a draw outside of Lawrence that Thompson had to request that posts about other swing dance events remain regional.

“Some people from France and Spain were posting about events there,” she says. “You know, we know where to look if we’re going to be in those countries. This is more of a local thing.”

A pug plays ball with pals during a weekly get-together of the Lawrence Pug Meetup Group. The online community exchanges announcements and meeting times at www.meetup.com.

If you’d like to look at Yahoo’s offerings, visit http://groups.yahoo.com and enter a hobby in the search engine. While that may connect you with other enthusiasts around the world, it’s easier to search locally by typing in “Lawrence, Kansas,” which yields more than 100 listings, like lawrencefreecycle, lawrencembc (the Lawrence Mountain Bike Club) and oct_ks (The Order of the Crimson Tongues). Or type “Kansas” to broaden your search.

Nadia Baraban says online sites like meetup.com are user-friendly to set up if you want to start a group yourself.

“You just have to find somebody with the same interests,” she said. “From there it’s pretty easy.”

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