Dog named Disco was missing for days — until she’s found 1,000 miles from home in NC
The family of a missing dog named Disco searched tirelessly for her, putting up fliers and canvassing their community in Arkansas.
Then Disco turned up at a Sara Lee bakery in North Carolina, over 1,000 miles away.
Her owner, Habooki Shepmann, said her dog never leaves her side unless it’s to do a little exploring, and even then, she’s never more than a whistle away.
“She’s been my steadfast companion for over a decade, and she’s got the most kind, gentle, attentive little soul,” Shepmann told McClatchy News.
Disco went missing from her family’s home in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, on Dec. 28, Shepmann said in the first of a series of posts on Facebook.
Shepmann began sharing daily updates on the search for Disco in which she detailed efforts from searching the area on foot, going door-to-door to alert neighbors and duct-taping her clothes up at a gas station.
On Jan. 2, someone posted a sighting of Disco at the Sara Lee plant in Tarboro, North Carolina, still wearing her signature yellow bandana. Disco was spooked and couldn’t be caught, so she was still on the run.
The post made its way to Shepmann, who got on a flight to North Carolina as soon as she could to continue the search. Meanwhile, a friend from Arkansas made his way to the area to help with efforts on the ground before she arrived.
Shepmann said someone she knew may have taken Disco in his car from their home in Arkansas, which is how she made it all the way to North Carolina. She looked through posts on Facebook and pieced together that Disco may have escaped from a car crash and was running loose.
“Mommy is coming for you, Disco,” she posted on Facebook.
After Shepmann touched down in Raleigh on Jan. 3 and made her way to Tarboro, a local search party looked for Disco as late as it could before calling it off for the night.
The next morning, as Shepmann was searching while in the car, she got a call from the local shelter about a Disco sighting. She was only a couple hundred feet from the address where a woman had spotted her dog, she said.
“I jumped out of that van so fast and ran up the driveway…” Shepmann told McClatchy News. “There was Disco on the porch just sitting on a cushy bench.”
A video taken by her friend shows their emotional reunion.
“I could show her that I’d never give up on her,” Shepmann said. “She knew immediately that it didn’t matter how much distance was between us; I’d walk every bit of it for her.”
Shepmann told McClatchy News the support across state lines was “invaluable.”
She drove back to Arkansas with Disco to avoid stressing out her dog with flying.
“As of 4am this morning, my family has been made whole again,” Shepmann announced on Facebook on Jan. 6 “After 9 days, 34 hours of driving, multiple plane rides, and over 2,400 miles, Disco is once again safely back where she should be, with her mom and dad and all her siblings.”
Now the healing process begins, Shepmann said.
“She wants to go with me everywhere. If I’m getting dressed to leave the house, Disco is patiently waiting at the door to accompany me,” she told McClatchy News. “She literally won’t allow me out of her sight now.”
Tarboro is about 75 miles east of Raleigh.
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