Dog unlocks door at vet's office and escapes like Houdini

A Sound Beach family have reunited with their dog, a day after he got out of his cage at a Hauppauge veterinary clinic, opened the back door, unlatched a gate and fled. Pharaoh, a 9-year-old German shepherd who was recovering from surgery to remove a testicular tumor at the Hauppauge Animal Hospital, somehow got out of his cage and was seen on surveillance video wandering around the clinic, said veterinarian Dr. Robert Rowman.

The video shows Pharaoh standing on his hind legs, putting his paws on a doorknob, opening the door and scampering outside, Rowman said. The dog made it through an exterior gate as well - even eluding police who responded to a silent security alarm triggered by the pooch's wanderings. The police did not see the dog escaping.



The clinic and the dog's owner, Caren Curti, notified local shelters, police and even postal carriers as they searched for the 75-pound, black-and-tan dog, who still wore his protective Elizabethan collar. Curti tearfully told reporters she was worried about the dog tearing his stitches and not getting his medicine.

"It's the greatest miracle in the world," she said about the dog's discovery. "He's just who I am. He's there for me. From the bottom of my whole person." Curti, 44, a mother of twin boys, 11, and two girls, 12 and 16, said she has had the dog since he was a couple of months old.



Pharaoh was found, still wearing his plastic cone collar, in Smithtown's Blydenburgh County Park by a dog walker headed toward the park's dog run. "Our goal is to make things better, see that things have happy endings," Rowman said. "Yesterday, it looked like this might not have a happy ending. The big risk was that he might get caught in traffic in the Hauppauge area."

But Curti said she doesn't believe her dog escaped without being let out by someone's oversight. "They're definitely negligent," she said, adding that she does not plan to file legal action if Pharaoh recovers.