A Montana dog came incredibly close to being kidnapped recently when a man jumped into and drove off with its owner’s car, thinking it was his. The man in question, Vincent Zepeda, posted a video of his mistake to Instagram, where it went viral, largely thanks to the incredibly chill dog minding its business in the back seat.



Zepeda opens the video with a warning: “This is why you should not leave your key fob in your car.” He explains that he was picking up a pizza and hopped back in the car to drive home, only to get “the shit scared” out of him when he noticed the lab in the backseat, sitting quietly and barely even registering that it was technically being kidnapped.


 

Fortunately, the man quickly realized that the car he was driving was not his, and the dog in the backseat wasn’t his dog, and turned the car around to return both vehicle and canine to their owner unharmed. The dog’s owner learned two important lessons that day: 1) Don’t leave your key fob in the car while you duck out; and 2) don’t rely on your dog to act as a guard dog or even pay the slightest amount of attention to its surroundings.


Zepeda told Storyful, “Because of the situation with weather and circumstances of a busy life, I didn’t imagine for one second the vehicle that opened for me wasn’t mine. It wasn’t until I had driven off in the direction of my ex-wife’s apartment that I had a strange sensation about someone or something in the back of the vehicle.”


To make matters more confusing, Zepeda has a silver lab who often rides in the rear of his vehicle, leading him to wonder if he’d brought her along for the ride without realizing; it was only seeing the other driver’s key fob in the middle console that tipped him off to the fact that he had inadvertently committed grand theft auto.