A faithful dog led rescue crews a quarter-mile down a dark Florida highway Saturday night to the scene of his owner's fatal car accident.
Gregory Todd Travers, 41, lost control of his vehicle on State Road 84 near Davie, slamming into a bridge support and rolling into the stretch of road. While first responders searched for the wreckage, a dog came limping toward them, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.
Led by Simon the German Shepherd, the group was able to find the wreckage. Simon circled and then licked Travers before jumping into the car next to his owner and waiting.
Tragically, Travers died at the scene.
"I think the dog definitely meant to lead them there," Davie Batallion Chief Robert Belizaire told the Sun-Sentinel. "I think he was out there looking for some help."
The Associate Press reports Simon was taken to Broward County’s animal shelter, where he was later picked up by Travers’ wife.
Long known as man’s best friend, dogs have made it into the news more than once for helping rescue their owners, even refusing to give up hope it was abandoned by humans.
Ella the Rottweiler was missing after her owners the Kelly family were also in a car accident in 2009 in Tennessee. Two weeks later a passerby found Ella on the side of the road, carefully hoarding a pile of the family’s belongings she had collected from where they had been strewn along the road. The family survived, and Ella was returned.
In New York, an elderly couple was rescued by their German Shepherd and wolf mix Shana in 2006 after being trapped by fallen trees during a storm. The couple had been treating an injured bird at a sanctuary on their forested property; Shana amazingly dug a tunnel back out of the enclosure into their house, carried them to safety, and lay on them for to keep them warm until help arrived.
Perhaps the most famous story of canine loyalty is that of Hachiko the Akita in 1920s Japan. Hachiko walked daily with his owner to the train station and would return at the end of each day to walk back home. After his owner died in an accident, Hachiko waited for 11 years at the station for him to come home. The story was made into a film in Japan in 1987 and then remade in the United States in 2009, starring Richard Gere.
WATCH: The trailer of Hachiko’s story. Be prepared with some tissues.