His real name is Rope, but many news outlets have taken to calling this crafty five-year-old Australian Shepherd Houdini, because he is an escape artist — he slipped out of the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region. How did he do it? Well, you know how the best way to commit a crime is to act as if you own the place? Rope acted as if he owned the place. He waited until everyone had gone home, then he stood up, opened the door to his kennel, opened the front door, and walked off into his new life — in greater Colorado Springs.
Rope, you see, can open doors and walk out of buildings. He’s a dog. Few dogs can just up and leave buildings through doors, a fact that the workers of the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region — and indeed the greater part of everyone the world who has a dog — rely on as a matter of course. They didn’t account for the dog who could just say “Toodles!” and blast through multiple exits, hat in hand. Paw.
“He indeed let himself out of the kennel room, and then let himself out of the building,” the Humane Society’s Gretchen Pressley told KKTV 11 News. “No one has ever gotten through the door into the rest of the shelter before. This was new for us.”
Staff didn’t discover the perfect escape until the next day — because it was a perfect escape. Once they realized a dog was gone, they checked security footage.
Oh, look at that.
“He had to actually push down the handle, push the door open and walk out in both cases,” Pressley said.
As for Rope, after he didn’t let the door hit him in the butt, he walked the streets for a while waiting for someone to find him and fall in love with him. That person was Ashley Heister, who found him and fell in love with him. She hustled him back to the Humane Society and said she was first in line to adopt the pooch.
“We think he’s a wonderful dog, and as much as I would love his owner to come and claim him … I can’t wait to welcome him into my family,” Heister said.
Alas, that didn’t happen. After the Humane Society posted a blurb about the escape on its Facebook page, Rope’s real owners saw it and hustled down to pick up the dog.
After they sheepishly acknowledged that, yes, the dog can “let himself in and out of all types of kennels and doors,” the shelter microchipped the dog for free, because he has “such a high risk of getting away again.”
Via KKTV 11 News; photo via Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region’s Facebook page
