Cisco: A dog brings people together in conflicted times
The Earhart boys, Lain and Wesley, with their canine family members. Cisco is seated between the two boys.
It seems like everywhere you turn these days, you find people arguing. Who’s the best political candidate; who’s got the truth about the pandemic; should you or shouldn’t you wear a mask; how much is too much to pay for organic free-range eggs?
And that’s just in Manchester.
But lately, in Manchester, there’s been a story circulating that might bring hope to even the most cynical. And it’s about a dog named Cisco.
Nearly a month ago, Cisco, the family pet of Beverly, Henry, Wesley and Lain Earhart, escaped from their camper on the way home from a camping trip–between Grass Lake and Manchester. Despite signs and posters and Facebook posts and lots of emails, phone calls, and other leads, as of this writing, Cisco still hasn’t been found.
But that’s not stopping Beverly Earhart. Most nights after she gets home from work, she’s delivering more flyers, tracking down the day’s leads, and taking food to possible sightings.
“What a roller coaster!” she says. The latest possible sighting, near Jackson, “sure looks like him; but we’re trying not to get our hopes up too much.” The sightings are getting further away, instead of closer. And although Cisco’s Tactipup collar has the family’s contact information–if it hasn’t been lost–he is not microchipped, so unless someone far away is highly motivated to seek out his owners, the likelihood of him coming home gets slimmer by the day.
But Beverly hasn’t lost hope. Quite the contrary. She says that the Manchester community has been “great,” responding to the family’s flyers with lots of phone calls, texts, Facebook tags, and messages. “People are amazing,” she adds. “And it seems to me, if Cisco is a story about anything right now, it’s the community coming together. And not just the Manchester community.”
She admits that her faith in humanity has been tested in recent days, but “this has really filled my heart with hope. It has been truly amazing!” she adds. “I am sure these people all have different beliefs too, ya know? It’s magical stuff.”
When handing out flyers, Beverly says that so many people already know about her lost dog. One woman she hasn’t even met has been helping by handing out flyers, and she’s found flyers in mailboxes of people where she knows she hasn’t placed them.
“It feels a bit like my world is spinning, right now,” she says. “I’m trying to balance regular life with finding our family member. It is such a helpless feeling, but the support of the surrounding communities has been amazing. I’m floored. It really feels like we have eyes everywhere and that we might be able to get this guy home to his family.
“And if not, I will never forget what people have done for us and what Cisco accomplished in such an uncertain time in all of our lives. He is the sweetest soul alive, it is only fitting that he would bring people together like this.”
The flyer the Earhart family is using to find their family dog, Cisco.
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