diff --git a/glanceclient/common/http.py b/glanceclient/common/http.py
index 40a39cb2..e84e9dbd 100644
--- a/glanceclient/common/http.py
+++ b/glanceclient/common/http.py
@@ -237,7 +237,7 @@ class HTTPClient(object):
         if content_type == 'application/octet-stream':
             # Do not read all response in memory when
             # downloading an image.
-            body_iter = resp.iter_content(chunk_size=CHUNKSIZE)
+            body_iter = _close_after_stream(resp, CHUNKSIZE)
             self.log_http_response(resp)
         else:
             content = resp.text
@@ -272,3 +272,14 @@ class HTTPClient(object):
 
     def delete(self, url, **kwargs):
         return self._request('DELETE', url, **kwargs)
+
+
+def _close_after_stream(response, chunk_size):
+    """Iterate over the content and ensure the response is closed after."""
+    # Yield each chunk in the response body
+    for chunk in response.iter_content(chunk_size=chunk_size):
+        yield chunk
+    # Once we're done streaming the body, ensure everything is closed.
+    # This will return the connection to the HTTPConnectionPool in urllib3
+    # and ideally reduce the number of HTTPConnectionPool full warnings.
+    response.close()
diff --git a/tests/utils.py b/tests/utils.py
index 845b1858..61783fae 100644
--- a/tests/utils.py
+++ b/tests/utils.py
@@ -126,6 +126,9 @@ class FakeResponse(object):
     def read(self, amt):
         return self.body.read(amt)
 
+    def close(self):
+        pass
+
     @property
     def content(self):
         if hasattr(self.body, "read"):