One dog had only been at a Colorado Springs area animal shelter for three days before he decided to bust out of his kennel–and then the building.
To pull off his so-called “great escape” on Oct. 8, a five-year-old Australian shepherd “had to actually push down the handle, push the door open and walk through it in both cases,” Gretchen Pressley, communications specialist for the Humane Society of Pikes Peak Region, told KKTV in a story that aired Friday. The dog wandered around the area before being spotted by Ashley Heister, who returned the pup hours later. The Humane Society nicknamed him “Houdini,” in honor of the great escape artist and magician Harry Houdini.
Heister was all ready to adopt him when his real owners came in the next day to reclaim the dog — originally named Rope — after seeing the KKTV news report, the shelter wrote on its Facebook page Monday. Pressley tells TIME that the Humane Society put a microchip in the dog free of charge so that whoever scans him can find out where he lives.
But maybe Rope is an apt name for a clever dog that can “let himself in and out of all types of kennels and doors.” After all, the real Houdini was also known for a “rope escape” trick, where he could get tied up in ropes as long as 60 feet and set himself free.