When you wake up from a coma in a hospital and you’re not entirely sure how you got there, the first thing you want to see is the familiar face of a loved one.

That’s what happened to John Allen of Tunica, MS. The loved one he wanted to see was his dog. Allen and his mixed-breed mutt, Lady Marie, were tooling along Highway 61 one day, Allen on his bicycle with Lady Marie in an attached two-wheeled cart, to which Allen had affixed signs saying “Louisiana to Michigan” and “Broke – Hungry – Lost Everything in a House Fire.”

“They didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Just a man and his dog, enjoying life and the company of each other,” the Tunica Times reports.

Suddenly, a car struck Allen’s bicycle. Thrown into the road, he was critically injured. “The impact was so profound, it caused Lady [Marie] to bolt in fear from the one person she loved more than anything. She ran into the nearby woods,” reports the Times.

As emergency workers strove to save Allen’s life and prepare him to be airlifted to the nearest medical center, Allen cried out for his dog.

It was around then that Tunica Animal Shelter director Sandy Williams got a call from a Mississippi state trooper. “He was concerned there was this man about to be airlifted to the Med and he was calling out for his dog,” Williams told MyFox-Memphis.

Arriving at the scene of the accident after Allen had been airlifted away, Williams located Lady Marie, who, besides an injured paw, was in good condition.

“She came running back to the only thing that she knew, and that was the wreckage of the trailer and the bike,” Williams said.

The first thing Allen asked for upon emerging from his coma was his dog. Williams assured him that Lady Marie was safe at the shelter — and showed him pictures to prove it.

Three months after the accident, Allen and Lady Marie — “who had nothing in this world but each other,” as MyFox-Memphis puts it — were finally reunited last Wednesday.