An Australian man is being hailed as a hero after he performed mouth-to-mouth on a dog that had been run over.



Steve Hunter, from Ballarat, was making a plaster delivery when Salty, a Fox Terrier-Jack Russell cross, suddenly ran out of a driveway and was clipped by an oncoming car.



Salty looked to be gone, but Hunter thought otherwise, The Courier reported.



He carried the dog to the side of the road, puckered up and, to use his words, "did the deed".



"I gave him CPR, did the whole works. I pulled his jaws apart - and by the way he didn't brush his teeth," he said.



"I pulled them apart, I got as close as I could and I was blowing air in his throat and with one hand giving him CPR on his ribcage.



"I thought 'you've gotta give him half a chance', because you never know."



Thankfully, Salty took his chance and came around long enough for a trip to the animal hospital.



The lucky five-year-old pooch is doing fine now, with a few cuts to the head and a fractured pelvis.



His owners met Hunter to thank him yesterday.



Jock Maule said Salty had been through a tough run, after an early run-in with a barbed wire fence, but that was nothing compared to this.



"When I saw him lying there I thought he was gone. Mate, you're a friggin' hero," Maule told Hunter.