EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. — An Arkansas dog has been reunited with its owner over 1,000 miles from home after she was reported missing almost a week earlier.
Habooki Shepmann is the owner and operator of Disco's Grill, a food truck in Eureka Springs. The grill is named after Shepmann's beloved dog, Disco.
"I can't even begin to tell you all the wonderful things about her personality. She's just one of a kind. I love her so much," Shepmann said.
According to a Facebook post from Shepmann, Disco went missing shortly after Christmas.
"She was able to get out of the gate at our house on East Mountain Drive this morning at around 11 a.m. and is likely on an adventure in the immediate area after not being able to get back into the yard," a Facebook post from Dec. 28 said. Disco, a black and tan dog, was wearing a distinct light-yellow bandana around her neck when she went missing.
A flurry of updates in the following days detailed the growing concern Shepmann had after Disco's disappearance.
"This is my worst nightmare," Shepmann posted. "We're coming up on the 48 hours missing mark. I'm redoubling efforts in the immediate area and going door to door today."
Shepmann was joined by community members in canvassing the area, passing out packets of missing fliers, and duct-taping her clothes to telephone poles in hopes of bringing Disco back home.
The search wasn't easy, as Shepmann said she was marred by false hope and practical jokes.
"Last night was spent managing my emotions of hopefulness and anger in between prank phone calls and texts. It was a special kind of torture," a Dec. 31 Facebook post from Shepmann said. I just keep telling myself that's the cost of having her picture shared so far and wide. I won't let my sadness over some mindless pranks deter me."
The time came for Shepmann to ring in the New Year and Disco was still nowhere to be found. However, she never gave up hope.
"I've had so many people repeat that 'no news is good news', so let's celebrate another day of no news! I just keep envisioning what it looks like to have her run back up to me and lick my face. May she be safe, warm, and back in her bed soon where she belongs," Shepmann said in a Jan. 1 Facebook post.
The next day, however, there was news, and it was good news.
"We have had a confirmed sighting of Disco out of state in North Carolina on 12/30/23," Shepmann posted on Jan. 2. "So let's all take a huge collective breath and have some happy tears that my baby has been spotted."
While Shepmann and the Eureka Springs community were searching, workers at a Sara Lee Frozen Bakery in Tarboro, North Carolina, had spotted a black and tan dog with a distinctive light-yellow bandana.
The workers recognized the lost dog from a post on a lost pet forum, identifying it from the light-yellow bandana around her neck. The spotting was shared with Shepmann, who joyfully confirmed on Facebook that it was Disco.
"It's absolutely Disco. She's currently trapped inside the gate of a massive Sara Lee plant and animal control has a group of 5 people working to try and catch her," a Jan. 3 post said. "Her trust has been broken and it looks like it's going to be really difficult for anyone other than me to actually get her collected. So that's my next step. I'm Raleigh bound. Wheels up in 3 hours."
"We heard that there might be a potential sighting in North Carolina and my wife contacted the humane society people up there and found a social media page that handled North Carolina lost pets," said Anthony Corbin, a friend who was watching Shepmann's house when Disco went missing.
Disco eventually escaped from the Sara Lee site. After a bit more searching, Shepmann posted that she had finally been successfully reunited with Disco on the morning of Jan. 4.
"When I was walking up, she was like, she looked at me and she just looked, and I pulled the hat off. And immediately she was like, 'you're here. You're here.'"
Both Shepmann and Corbin say it's incredible how both the Eureka Springs community and the Tarboro community came together to help find Disco.
"The response was just incredible. I'm really proud of our community," Corbin said.
"I knew that all my friends knew about it. I knew that they all cared about Disco, and they were all pushing it out there. But today, it became really apparent to me in real-time how many people that I don't know that know me and now know Disco," Shepmann said.
She later found out that someone she knew had driven Disco all the way to North Carolina and ended up getting in a car accident which caused Disco to flee the car and get stranded in Tarboro. She said she's unsure if she'll press charges on the person who took the dog across the country, but for right now she's just happy to be reunited with Disco.