The moment a woman walked into her living room to find a dog that doesn’t belong to her lounging on her sofa has gone viral on Instagram, earning over 6.2 million views.
The clip, posted by Michal Ruth, 51, (@michalruths), shows the excited pup wagging her tail while sprawled across the couch. Ruth can be heard laughing behind the camera, saying: “This is not my dog.”
The camera then pans Ruth’s actual pets—two black giant schnauzers called Jett and Jemma—before she explains the situation. It turns out that Billie the boxer dog made her grand entrance by busting a hole in the fence at the start of January and has practically moved in ever since, only returning home for food and sleep.
Ruth, who is based in Austin, Texas, told Newsweek: “They are truly best friends. They play together constantly.”
“She has been over here all day, every day ever since,” Ruth told her followers during the video.
In the comments, she revealed this wasn’t Billie’s first attempt at breaking in: “She has previously dug under the fence numerous times.”
“There’s no rock big enough this time,” she wrote.
Far from being annoyed, Ruth said she doesn’t mind the extra canine company. “She’s good for my pups, too. They’re not as clingy with Billie around,” she wrote.
Ruth told Newsweek: “While my dogs sometimes wander into Billie’s yard through the opening, Billie is mostly in my yard. My dogs are extremely attached to me.
“I cannot sit down without them immediately climbing onto my lap. As much as I love them, it can be a lot,” the poster said.
“Billie has actually helped ease that a bit. She gives them another outlet, so they are not quite as clingy as they were before.”
In the comments, Ruth said that Billie’s owner has five children—a detail that sparked sympathy among commenters.
One user posted, “It’s her mini vacation,” while another added: “Poor dog needs a well-deserved break in a calm household—I can’t blame her. It’s also interesting to see a dog actively make choices like that.”
Commenters assume Billie’s home life is chaotic, but science shows pets play a big role in children’s lives. Surprisingly, researchers still don’t know as much as you might expect about these relationships, partly because there haven’t been great tools to measure them.
In one study of 77 children around age 12, researchers adapted a well-known survey used for human relationships to better understand how kids bond with their pets. They examined whether these bonds varied by pet type, child’s gender, and how they compared to sibling relationships.
The study found that:
- Girls were more likely than boys to share feelings with their pets, spend time with them, and even experience some conflict.
- Dog owners reported greater satisfaction and spent more time with their pets than kids with other kinds of animals
Overall, children said they felt happier and had fewer arguments with their pets than with their brothers or sisters—suggesting companion animals can play a uniquely positive role during early adolescence.
Reference
Cassels, Matthew T, et al. “One of the Family? Measuring Young Adolescents’ Relationships with Pets and Siblings.” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, vol. 49, Mar. 2017, pp. 12-20. ScienceDirect, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2017.01.003.