LAPLACE — Bandit is a Houdini.

No matter how many times Jill Kelly fixes the gaps in the backyard fence, her 7-year-old Pomeranian still finds a way to get out.

He did it again on June 30, but this time was different.

“Usually when he gets out, he just goes to these apartments behind us,” Kelly said. “They all know him. This time, though, I couldn’t find him.”

After gaining his freedom, Bandit went on an adventure and began a saga that played out throughout the July 4th weekend on a St. John community Facebook page.

While Kelly was busy making posters, posting Bandit’s photo on various Facebook pages and trying to console her 3-year-old son, Collin, Bandit was wandering away from his Greenwood Drive home to near Belle Terre Boulevard.

That’s where Travon Kendrick’s roommate found Bandit, who was wearing a collar but had lost his nametag, and brought him home. Well, first he brought Bandit to a local veterinarian’s office to see if he had a microchip.

He did, but it turned out, the chip had never been registered into the national database.

“It was never registered,” Kelly said. “We never knew it. We had no idea. We just assumed it was.”

Kendrick, meanwhile, was working under the assumption that Bandit was an abandoned dog in need of a home. He just happened to know a nice family in Prairieville who would love to have him and sent the dog their way.

The family took great care of Bandit.

“They got him shots, he had a new bed, a new collar and everything,” Kelly said.

Then Kendrick started seeing photos of Bandit on Facebook, and especially, that Collin was heart-broken over the loss of his dog.

After a flurry of messages back and forth, Kendrick was finally able to retrieve Bandit from his temporary home and return him to the Kellys Sunday afternoon.

Not only were the Kellys relieved, but so were the dozens of people who were following Bandit’s fate on Facebook.

“I work at P.J.’s and everybody’s still talking about it,” Kelly said. “My post was shared more than 200 times. It’s nice to see Facebook being used for good for a change.”

Kelly also wants to warn other pet owners not to take for granted that their microchip is registered.

“I don’t want this to happen to anybody else,” she said. “We were so lucky. We were lucky that he was found by a good person and he was taken care of. Anything could have happened to him.”