An elderly man and his two pooches were stranded in the remote Oregon high desert for four days, and was only rescued by sheer luck — when a passing cyclist happened to find him, clinging to life, authorities said.

Gregory Randolph, 73, had hiked about 14 miles with one of his dogs when his Jeep became wedged in a narrow, dry creek bed earlier this month. When long-distance mountain biker Tomas Quinones happened to cross paths with him on July 18, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

“As I got closer, I thought, ‘That’s a funny looking cow’ and then I realized that this was a man,” Quinones told the Associated Press in a Thursday phone interview.

“I started noticing that he sometimes would look at me but his eyes were all over the place, almost rolling into the back of his head,” Quinones added. “Once I got a better look at him, I could tell that he was in deep trouble.”

Randolph was severely sunburned and could barely talk, sit up or drink the water Quinones offered him. Quinones pressed the “SOS” button on his GPS tracking device because he had no cellphone signal.

Suddenly, one of Randolph’s dog’s — a Shih Tzu — appeared out of the brush and Quinones fed it peanut butter.

An ambulance arrived more than an hour later and brought Randolph to the hospital, leaving the dog behind. A deputy showed up minutes later and took the dog after Quinones gave him his report.

Oregon State Police used an airplane to search for Randolph’s Jeep, which they discovered two days later miles from the nearest paved road.

“It’s still there,” Lake County Deputy Buck Maganzini said. “It very well could stay there forever. I don’t know how he got the Jeep in as far as he did.”

A second dog belonging to Randolph was discovered on the site — also alive. It appears the pup may have survived by drinking some water from mud puddles, according to Maganzini.

Randolph stayed at the hospital for several days — but now both he and his dogs are home recovering.

“He was just out driving the roads — that’s kind of common out here,” Maganzini said. “There’s not a heck of a lot else to do. You see a lot of pretty country.”

Meanwhile, Quinones, who finished his back-country bike trip, said it would have been a six-hour ride to the next campsite with cellphone service if he hadn’t had his “SOS” device on hand.

“There’s no way to tell how long he’d been collapsed on that road,” Quinones said. “It’s kind of mind-blowing.”

With Post Wires