Pet Owner Shocked to Discover What Rescue Dog Does When Left Home Alone

A rescue dog has been rumbled getting up to no good while her owners are out.

Texas pet owner Shelli told home security firm Ring that they began to fear the worst after things started appearing in unexpected places around the house.

In particular, a set of towels kept being taken out of their closet and left on the floor. "My husband swore it was our resident ghost, Mr. Phipps," she told Ring. "But the mystery of how the towels keep ending up on the floor was revealed!"

In a video shared with Newsweek, Stella the dog can be seen pulling the towels down from her parents' closet, before making a swift escape from the scene of the crime.

Stella was caught red-pawed after her owner set up a camera outside the closet to catch the culprit.

Stella, a nine-year-old mixed breed, was adopted from the North Texas no-kill animal shelter Operation Kindness back in 2014.

However, it's only now that her owner is learning of Stella's penchant for pulling down towels. "She must've been doing it for about two weeks, and it wasn't at night — it was during the day when we were gone," Shelli said.

"We joked that it was Mr. Phipps, our ghost. He gets blamed when strange things happen. The other option was our yorkie/shih tzu mix (Teddy), but I wondered how on earth he could reach that high."

Pet owners often wonder what their canine companions get up to while their humans are out of the house. Some like to climb, others take things a little further.

One thing appears certain though: dogs miss their owners while they are gone. In a 2011 study published in Applied Animal Behavior Science, 12 dogs with no history of separation issues were filmed before, during and after being left alone by their owners in a home environment.

Each dog was filmed on three occasions; after 30 minutes, after two hours and after four. The researchers found that the dogs greeted their owners in a more animated fashion after two hours than they did after 30 minutes.

Stella's strange habit of pulling down the towels could be linked to this. The towels likely contain the smell of her owners and she may simply be seeking them out as a reminder of her humans' scent. Then again, she may simply be exploring the home, free from the constraints that her paw-rents may have otherwise had in place.

Whatever the case, Shelli told Ring she was shocked to discover Stella was the culprit. "The only reason I put the camera on the floor of the closet was to find out how the towels ended up on the floor every day—it was driving me crazy!" she said. "I was surprised it was Stella (she is such a good girl)—Teddy is the little troublemaker."

The discovery also helped her work out who was behind other strange going-ons in the house. "This also solved the case of the dirty towels/wash clothes being dragged out of the laundry basket on a regular basis. Again, Stella," Shelli said.

It sounds like they are going to be keeping a close eye on Stella from now on.

Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@newsweek.com with some details about your best friend and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.