A West Knoxville woman is calling it a Christmas miracle. Her dog is now safe and sound following what she suspects was a dog-napping case.

Dina Taher’s four-year-old dog Mellow went missing on Thursday evening, when her home was burglarized.

“I look around, I see everything’s gone. I see I have no dog, and that’s when I really start to freak out,” Taher said Sunday evening at her home.

She took to Facebook, posting an open letter to the thief, in which she pleaded for her dog’s safe return. Included in the note were pictures of Mellow. She believes that’s what led to Sunday’s happy reunion, after somebody found Mellow wandering in a neighborhood Saturday night near Young-Williams Animal Center.

“My theory is that whoever took him saw or heard about the story on the news and dropped him off at the shelter. It was 11 o’clock at night, so the shelter’s closed, and he just started to walk around, and then the first person he saw, he walked up to,” Taher said. “They kept him overnight, took a picture of him, put him on Facebook and someone reached out to me and said, ‘Here’s your dog!'”

Some people on social media have suggested maybe the dog just ran off when the burglar broke in, but Mellow ended up nine miles from where Taher lives.

“It’s hard for me to believe that he wandered nine miles with gimpy legs and curvy roads on the way there,” Taher said.

Mellow was in decent health Sunday but in need of the allergy and pain medications he takes regularly.

“When he got home and got calmed down, that’s when I realized that he was limping a little bit and his eyes were red,” Taher said. “I was like, ‘Alright, it’s time for your meds.'”

Mellow is now bouncing back, and Taher has another message to say openly.

“To every single person out there who shared Mellow’s story, listened to Mellow’s story, read it, talked about it with their friends, I just want to say thank you,” Taher said. “It was the help of the media and social media and everybody out there that got Mellow back home.”

Taher estimates the burglar took a total of $5,000-worth of her belongings, including two flat-screen televisions and her safe, which contained her Christmas shopping money and personal journals dating back to 2000. Getting Mellow back, however, was her top priority. She said almost everything else can be replaced.