Good spot Rob! In the past we (urllib3) have been pretty optimistic about assuming connections are still useful when we hit exceptions, but increasingly that o

Good spot Rob! In the past we (urllib3) have been pretty optimistic about assuming connections are still useful when we hit exceptions, but increasingly that optimism seems to be hurting us. For that reason, I've taken your fix, added tests for it, then proposed it to the main urllib3 repository[0]. Right now the commits are in my name, but I'd be totally happy for you to make them yourself and open a pull request containing my commits. Either way, I've also added you to our contributors list. Thanks for the write up! [0]: https://github.com/shazow/urllib3/pull/734 https://github.com/shazow/urllib3/pull/734