How Houdini hound, Diesel, was reunited with his owner

Cape Town - When Cape Town bartender JP du Toit spotted a well-groomed dog tied to a railing near his home, he knew he couldn’t just walk away.

Luckily for the hybrid timber wolf, Du Toit didn’t walk away and through his determination, the dog, Diesel, was reunited with his family.

"I am so freaked out, in a good way, by how this turned out," said owner Shaun Fourie when he heard details of the journey his Houdini hound had taken to get back home.

On Saturday morning, Du Toit took the train back to Brackenfell station after a night shift where he spotted the well-groomed dog tied to a railing.

He sat next to the dog to make sure he was OK.

After a few minutes, some homeless people approached him and "offered" to sell the dog to him for R100.

He was suspicious and pointed out that they didn't look like the owners.

Rescue

"That’s when I snapped. I almost had to fight my way out of there, but there was no way I would leave my newfound friend, Diesel, behind," he said, although he would only discover the dog's name much later as it had no name tag.

He took the dog with the men in hot pursuit.

He shouted at them and eventually managed to shake them off.

Du Toit, a cat owner, stopped at a petrol station to buy dog food, wondering the entire time where he would keep Diesel.

He asked a man standing outside the shop, Ian Dalhouzie, to look after hound while he was inside.

Dalhouzie quickly offered to take care of the dog until they could find his home.

"It's a beautiful dog and could have ended up anywhere. My wife put up pictures on a Facebook group and after two or three hours, we got a message from the owner," Dalhouzie said.

'Skinny and neglected'

Fourie had driven around for an hour looking for his pet and also put up a notice on Facebook.

It emerged that Diesel had slipped through a tiny gap in the fencing and his name tag had come off.

Keeping the family on their toes, the timid dog escaped again on Monday after hearing thunder, but was thankfully picked up nearby.

Diesel first belonged to Fourie's friend, who found him skinny and neglected in an industrial area of Bellville.

The friend had to hand him over two years ago because Diesel's extreme hair shedding was a risk to their newborn baby.

Fourie is now not taking any more chances and has bought material to reinforce his boundary fence.

"[Diesel is] 5-years-old now. My eldest daughter and him are very close. When she is not here, he is totally depressed."

Fourie joked that Diesel should be called a “timber wolf ninja” or "David Copperfield", after the American illusionist.