#HOUDINI DOG ZIP#

He loves other dogs and is learning all about the joy of squeaky toys.Įvery sitting lap is considered his to occupy.īut escape artist tendencies can die hard. While the dog is still getting the hang of walking on a leash, he’s acclimated to his foster home life exceptionally well, Hart said. Now he’s among those who have applied to give Houdini a permanent home. “His wife told me that he always worried about him.” “He works third shift and he’d talk to him every night, he’d say ‘Please, please’ ” come in from the cold, Hart said. One port worker had tried especially hard to catch him every night he’d see him. No one knows how the dog came to be a resident at the busy terminal, though he’s thought to be only a little over 2 years old so he must have landed there as a puppy. She described Houdini as “playful, an expert snuggler and super smart.”Įven scary smart, she said, noting he was learning tricks as fast as they could be taught to him.Īs soon as the video was posted - with an edited version that aired on CNN - the group received a flood of applications from people who wanted to adopt him, including several from the Port of Los Angeles, where he had been known and fed by workers for so long.

“It was like he was almost relieved to be OK,” she said. The once-terrified canine who thought he needed nobody, Hart said, was quick to accept some human love and bonding. He was in remarkably good health considering his maverick lifestyle.īoth Rescue From the Hart and Hope for Paws, based in the central Los Angeles-Hollywood areas, have worked together to socialize and train Houdini so he might find a home for Christmas. “He’s just such a happy dog,” said Annie Hart, who founded Rescue From the Hart with her husband, James, and took part in the rescue. “It’s worth it.”įast forward a few weeks after being neutered, vaccinated, bathed and cuddled and it’s hard to believe it’s the same dog. “You feel bad while it’s happening, but you know he’s going to be so much happier when he’s rescued and is living in someone’s house, being on a lap and being loved,” Arturo said. He snapped ferociously at volunteers’ hands as they tried to calm him down. He was kind of trapped.”Ī video taken of the capture shows the chase that exhausted all of the two-footed participants.įinally, Houdini made a dash that landed him right into the hand-held snare and onto the ground, twisting and fighting as he tried to get free. “So we built a little soccer net fortress. “He was very smart and jumped one of the cement dividers,” Arturo said. It still took them more than an hour to outwit and snag him.

#HOUDINI DOG ZIP#

29, a volunteer team arrived prepared with a battle plan that included long rolls of plastic soccer fencing, zip ties, an animal snare, a big net and a wire cage. “We’d get close and he’d yell at us ‘woo-woo-woo-woo!’ - like ‘Get off my turf! Get lost!’ ” “We’d been out there three times before we actually caught him,” said Lisa Arturo of Hope for Paws, a rescue group that specializes in tough cases and heard about Houdini through a social media follower. In the end, it took a “small army with Ninja skills,” as one participant described it - and a well-crafted strategy - to finally snag the crafty little dog, thought to be a mix of a miniature pinscher and Chihuahua weighing no more than 12 to 14 pounds.

Houdini dog