Who let the dogs out?

06:48 PM CDT on Tuesday, October 5, 2004

By Mark Phillips / CBS News

Click to watch video

The world may be at war but the great affairs of state have taken a back seat this morning to a new British Hero. Hairy Houdini, the Grrrreat Escape, scream the headlines.

London’s Battersea Dogs Home finally has the answer to the question: "Who Let the Dogs Out?"

CBS

Red and his buddies enjoyed nightly escapes until they got caught -- red-pawed.

The answer is Red -- a former stray, mostly Greyhound, mixed breed, who’s learned a thing or two in the time he’s been waiting for a new home. He’s learned how to flip the latch on his cage—from the inside.

And Red—being an equal opportunity doggy escape artist—then methodically went about freeing all his friends.

The kennel keepers had set up closed circuit TV to discover why they kept finding all the dogs loose when they arrived in the morning.

CBS

Red learned how to unlatch his lock from the inside and the other cages from the outside.

"He’s such a sociable dog, and he goes along and picks his particular friends and I just love the fact that he could have gone in the kitchen himself and ate all the food, but he didn’t, he made sure everyone had their share," said Liz Emeny with Battersea's Dog's Home.

Now they know it was an inside job, they’ll put an extra lock on Red’s cage. But how long can it be until he figures that one out?