He saved this dog from an animal rescue shelter. And four months later the dog saved his life.

Brian Myers knew he was in trouble when he fell to the floor. He had no feeling on his left side and couldn’t stand up in the crawl space between his bed and the wall.

“It was really frightening,” he said. “My cell phone was on the dresser about 15 feet away, but there was no way I could get to it.”

Seconds later, Myers, 59, felt something wet and rough on his face: his dog’s tongue.

Sadie, the 100-pound German shepherd he had rescued from an animal shelter near his Teaneck, N.J., home last fall, was standing above him.

“She kept licking me and crying, so I reached my right hand up to pet her, then I grabbed her collar,” recalled Myers of that January night. He was stunned by what happened next.

Sadie backed up and began pulling Myers inch by inch out of the crawl space, and then wiggled toward his dresser.

“She was not trained as a service dog, but she could tell I was in trouble,” he said. “I don’t know how she did it, but she knew.”

Five minutes later, he was in front of his dresser and able to reach up with his right arm to retrieve his cell phone to call for help.

At Englewood Health hospital that night, an MRI revealed that Myers had suffered a stroke. Doctors told him it was likely that his four-legged companion had saved his life.

“It was the best decision I’d ever made, to adopt her,” said Myers, who has regained much of his mobility, thanks to physical therapy. “I really feel it was meant to be.”

Another serious illness led him to adopt Sadie — a dog that nobody else seemed to want — at the Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge in Oakland, N.J., last September.

Myers is retired and lives alone. He felt lonesome and scared after he came down with COVID-19 last March, he said.

“I decided it would be a good idea to get a dog, after all the time I’d sat in my house by myself,” Myers said. “I’d had a rescue dog before, but I had to put him down a couple of years ago. I was ready for another one.”

About six months after he’d recovered from the coronavirus, a friend who is familiar with the Ramapo-Bergen refuge emailed him a photo of Sadie, and Myers was immediately intrigued. Sadie had been identified by the shelter as “hard to place” because of her aggressive behavior.

The refuge often accepts dogs who have behavior issues, said Megan Brinster, Ramapo-Bergen’s executive director, and works with the animals to make them more adoptable.

Sadie exhibited aggression toward men, Brinster said; other visitors to the refuge were intimidated by her large size and loud bark. The 6-year-old dog had been sent away by three animal shelters because of her behavior before she ended up at Ramapo-Bergen.

“She’s very protective and anxious in a kennel situation,” Brinster said. “When she doesn’t want someone in her space, she’ll make herself look big and start barking. But after Brian put in his application, we thought, ‘Let’s give them a chance.’”

Recalled Myers, “When I first saw Sadie, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s one big dog.’ I believe that her size is one of the reasons they had a problem placing her.”

Within minutes of meeting, though, Myers and Sadie were playing fetch, and Myers was able to take her for a walk.

“They were this amazing match,” Brinster said. “It was clear they were ready to go.”

After the adoption papers were finalized, Myers loaded Sadie into the back seat of his car and drove directly to a pet store to buy a big bag of dog food, some chew bones, a squeaky toy, and a dog bed.

“I kept looking in the rearview mirror and saying, ‘Wow, what a big girl!’” he said.

Shortly after Myers and Sadie arrived home, she stood on her hind legs, put her paws on his shoulders, and licked his face.

“I knew that I wanted to make the rest of her years happy ones,” he said.

On their first night together, Myers discovered that Sadie’s idea of happiness involved ditching the new dog bed and taking over his own.

“She’d start out on the pillow next to mine, then end up sleeping at the foot of the bed,” he said. “It became her routine. I thought, ‘After all she’s been through, who am I to deny her the pleasure of sleeping in a bed?’”

In December, when Myers came down with COVID-19 a second time (doctors told him that he’d been exposed to a new variant), he said Sadie stayed by his side in bed until he felt better. Weeks later, he had his stroke, which he said doctors told him had been brought on by blood clots due to COVID-19.

When he was released from a rehab center in early February, Myers’ brother brought Sadie for a reunion in the parking lot. Myers wept as Sadie jumped into his lap and smothered him with sloppy kisses.

“She knocked my glasses off and kept licking my face,” he said. “And all I could do was just hug her close and say, ‘I love you.’”