A dog saved her owner – who hurt his leg at home in rural Washington state, fell and couldn’t get up for hours – by walking to a road, sitting in the middle of it until a local sheriff’s deputy stopped, and leading the officer to him, according to authorities.

Gita’s ability to be “a good girl and true hero” in her 84-year-old owner’s moment of need after his injury at their cabin on 25 September led to her “saving his life that day”, the Stevens county sheriff’s office said in a statement.

“The loyalty and heroism of our furry friends never cease to amaze us,” the agency added.

Gita, 13, had sat down in the middle of a road when a Stevens county deputy first encountered her. The deputy tried to get the dog into his patrol cruiser so he could then look for her owner, but she wouldn’t get in.

The deputy subsequently left the dog where she was and checked homes within a mile of the area, but he could not find her owner, the sheriff’s office said. The sheriff’s office said the deputy feared something was wrong, so he went back to the dog – and found her lying down on the centerline of the road.

Gita at that point took off up a lightly traveled, unmarked path nearby when the deputy tried to get her off the roadway and away from potentially being hit by a motorist, the sheriff’s office said. The deputy followed Gita, who eventually led him to a small summer cabin.

The deputy soon heard an elderly man’s voice call out for help while on the ground a short distance from the cabin, according to the sheriff’s office. The man had medical conditions that required certain medications that he had not been able to take after falling and hurting his leg several hours earlier.

“He … may have had serious consequences if he had not been found,” the sheriff’s office said.

The sheriff’s office didn’t say how Gita’s owner may have been treated or where he may have been taken. But the agency described Gita as a “rescue dog and best friend of the gentleman in trouble”, and it explicitly credited her for “saving his life that day”..