An adopted dog is being hailed as a hero after helping save a man from a heart attack in Windsor, Ont.

Bella was adopted by Rob Sheardown in July. On Sunday, she amazed her new owner.

Sheardown was bringing Bella home from a trip to the park when the two walked into their Shoreline Towers apartment building and she suddenly refused to listen to Sheardown.

She wouldn't budge until the paramedics got there. - Rob Sheardown, owner

"Sunday was the first time Bella refused to listen to me," he said.

Bella also refused to get in the elevator and instead dragged Sheardown back to the lobby.

That's where an elderly man was having a heart attack on the floor, next to a couch and out of sight from everyone. Bella sat with her paw on the man's arm.

"She wouldn't budge until the paramedics got there," Sheardown said. "They told me to get him up off the floor, which I did. I put him on the couch and Bella stayed with him until EMS came and loaded him on the stretcher and took him away."

The man survived the heart attack but was unavailable for comment.

"She's gotten a whole bunch of special treatment, that's for sure," Sheardown said of Bella.

Sheardown isn't sure how Bella knew the man was in trouble.

She looks like a beige lab but she's really an Anatolian shepherd dog, bred to protect livestock.

Sheardown's friend, Shawna French, thinks that's why she might be so intuitive.

"She's definitely Rob's protector so I just have this feeling that she had this sense that something was going on," French said.

Sheardown got Bella from the Humane Society after his previous dog, Jasmin, died in July. Jasmin saved Sheardown from a house fire two years ago.