Kansas family’s dog went missing eight years ago. It just turned up in Idaho

CALDWELL (Idaho statesman) – Nicolle Leon went to work one morning in 2015. When she returned to her home in Wichita, Kansas later that day, the family dog, a beagle named Roscoe, was gone.

“He’s gone,” Leon said. “We looked for him everywhere.”

Roscoe was one year old when he disappeared. The family searched for him, and Leon called the shelter every day for months. She didn’t understand how he could get out of the fenced yard.

“There were no signs that the gate was open, you know, and no holes were dug,” Leon said.

For the next eight years, the family lived on, unaware of what had happened to their beloved dog.

Then, just before midnight on January 11, Leon received a call.

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She was out of town on a work trip in Texas and awoke to the news that Roscoe had been found 1,400 miles away.

“They said, ‘Hey, we found your dog,'” Leon said. “My first thought was that one of my dogs that I have now got out.”

Leon didn’t recognize the address the person had given her. The caller later said the address was in Caldwell, Idaho, about 1,400 miles from Wichita.

Leon dismissed the idea that the dog was hers until she asked for a description.

“She says it’s a beagle and I jumped up right away,” Leon said. “Are you kidding me?”

Roscoe had been found on a street in Caldwell by a woman who had turned him over to the West Valley Humane Society. Two other women, Shae DeBerry and Katherine Miller, were involved in bringing Roscoe home, Leon told an Eagle reporter.

Miller, a member of the Lost and Found Pets of Caldwell, Idaho Facebook group, had just purchased a microchip scanner and scanned Roscoe’s chip.

“This dog has been missing for 6-7 years,” Miller said on the group’s Facebook page.

Days later and after contacting Leon, DeBerry arranged for Roscoe to finally go home.

“Friday, January 13th, I loaded little Roscoe into a truck to send him big to his family,” DeBerry said in a post about Roscoe on the Facebook group.

Roscoe arrived in Wichita on the morning of January 15.

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“I asked myself, ‘Will he recognize us?’ ‘ said Leon. “When he got out of that van he was so excited and he was wagging his tail. He jumped over my kids.”

While she’s happy to have Roscoe, now 9, back home, Leon is curious as to where he’s been all these years.

“My first reaction was if there was an owner who took care of him all along,” said Leon. “It’s sad because we missed eight years with him.”

Leon’s children, Alani and Alex, were young when Roscoe disappeared. They are now 17 and 14 years old. Roscoe joined a family with two other dogs at his old home.

“She [kids] so happy to have him back.” Leon said. “It feels good to have him and to take care of him for the rest of his life.”