Julie Thornton Johnson and Jimmy Johnson have three dogs with who they are very close. Their bed is also the dogs’ bed.

So, when a dog wandered into their bed in the middle of the night, they didn’t think anything of it. Except it wasn’t their dog.

The southeastern Tennessee couple didn’t know that anything was out of the ordinary until the next morning after a thunderstorm.

Jimmy then asked his wife who the dog was.

She didn’t have an answer for him because she had absolutely no idea who this 90-lb bulldog-lab mix was lying in their king-size bed, or where she came from.

“He and I locked eyes for a second and just were silent. And I was like, ‘That’s not our dog,’ ” Julie told The Washington Post.

The dog was just lying on her back, belly up, hoping to get some scritches.

“One, how did the dog get in my house? And two, we have three dogs, and they bark at anything. A squirrel in the yard, a rabbit, a bird, they bark. And there was no noise,” Julie said.

The couple believes they must have accidentally left the back door open.

They still don’t know how she managed to snuggle up beside them without their other dogs making a fuss.

“It was obvious then that she was of no harm to anybody. She was just a pup having a spend-a-night party,” Julie told USA Today.

Julie and Jimmy were ready to adopt their new friend, but they figured they should try to find her parents to make sure they were stealing someone’s fur baby.

“This is the weirdest post I have ever had to make,” she wrote on Facebook. “Is this your dog?”

A few hours later, Cris Hawkins and Felecia Johnson responded saying the mystery dog belonged to them and her name is Nala.

Nala ran off after getting loose from her collar during a walk.

They searched for the dog but had to turn back when it got dark.

They hoped that Nala would eventually find her way back home. Instead, she found her way into Julie and Jimmy’s house after being scared by the thunderstorm.

“She definitely did not use the key under the mat. She did not come down the chimney, she did not break-in through a window,” said Julie. “We’ve had some people asking us like, ‘Well, did she come in through the air conditioning vents? How did this dog get in the house?’ Nope, she walked right in the front door.”

Julie woke up around 4:30 a.m. and just assumed the lump was one of her dogs. It wasn’t until 6:30 a.m. that Jimmy woke up and realized this wasn’t the case.

“She’s almost as big as I am, but since she’s been a puppy, I carry her on my hip like she’s a little kid. And now that she’s grown, she’s still expects me to do that,” the dog’s owner said. “It’s a lot harder now, but I had to carry this big dog out of (Julie and Jimmy’s) house. If it wasn’t crazy enough. … I had to carry her out like a child.”

Now Nala and her parents have some new friends. They even had a playdate with Julie’s dogs. The story about Nala’s slumber party ended up going viral.

Julie said she was glad that others could share in their joy over the story. She was also to have made five new friends. Watch a video about this story below.

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