WATCH: Leashed dog survives elevator scare

Terrifying footage shows the moment a dog’s leash got trapped in an elevator door and he was nearly choked to death.

Tamara Seibert watched in horror as Vado, her 50-kg Rottweiler, flew to the ceiling of her condo elevator after his leash was caught in the doors of the descending lift.

As the dog was choking, she desperately began pressing the emergency buttons to stop the elevator as it went from the 11th floor down to parking. But when that failed and only sounded an alarm, she rushed back over to the struggling dog and tried to free him from his collar, shredding her hands and breaking two fingers in the process.

“I thought I was going to watch him die,” Seibert said Wednesday from her downtown condo. “He’s 110 pounds and he was just picked clean off the ground. I just panicked and was going to do whatever I could to get him down. We just kept going down until his nylon leash ended up snapping.”

The traumatic March 2 incident was captured by a surveillance camera in the elevator. Seibert, 25, asked for a copy of the minute-long footage and posted it to her Facebook Tuesday to spread the word to other pet owners about being more careful in elevators.

Agencies/Canadajournal