A Tennessee couple woke up to find that an unexpected guest had made its way into their bed one night this month.
Julie Johnson, 42, thought the 90-pound bulldog-labrador mix named Nala was one of her three dogs until she asked her husband, 34-year-old Jimmy Johnson, about the surprise guest on May 1, and he said, "Julie, whose dog is this?"
After rolling over to get a look, Julie recalled in an interview with the Washington Post, “He and I locked eyes for a second and just were silent. And I was like, ‘That’s not our dog.'"
She wrote a post on Facebook asking people in the surrounding area about the hound.
"This is the weirdest post I have ever had to make," Julie wrote. "Is this your dog?"
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Johnson said she posted to Facebook after realizing that the dog was well taken care of and had owners. "It is absolutely normal to wake up in our house with one of OUR dogs in the bed with us," she wrote in her post before noting there being a "small problem."
"THIS IS NOT OUR DOG, nor do we know how she got in our house," Julie added.
Julie speculated that the dog had been able to sneak into the house after 2 a.m. when her husband let the dogs out before going to bed, and surmised strong winds that night blew open a door that wasn't properly latched, according to the report.
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Hours after Julie posted on Facebook in an attempt to locate the dog's owners, the bulldog-lab mix had been identified as Nala. Her owners came at about 11:30 a.m. to get their dog only to find that Nala had gotten attached to her new home.
"This poor woman had to come in our house, into our bedroom with my husband in bed with her dog and force her out of the bed," Julie said.
Nala's owner, Felecia Johnson, told the Washington Examiner that when she had arrived, she had "to go into the house" where Jimmy was "still laying in the bed with Nala."
Since the surprise sleepover, Nala and her owners, Felecia Johnson and Cris Hawkins, Felecia's girlfriend, have become friends with Julie and Jimmy Johnson. As of Wednesday, the two families had a "puppy play date" scheduled, according to a Facebook post from Julie Johnson.
"They are amazing people," Felecia told the Washington Examiner. "They handled the situation in the best possible way."
The Washington Examiner reached out to Julie and Jimmy Johnson for a request for comment.