Sidney's Near-Death Experience!

Sidney and I had quite a lunch hour! Sidney narrowly escaped a nasty run-in with the elevator.

We were returning home from a potty break, when I stepped out of the elevator and walked to the door, fully expecting Sidney to come bounding out at my side since he's usually so eager to get back into the apartment. When I reached the door, I turned to see if he was sitting at my feet... but he wasn't. He was still sitting in the elevator. I called him over to me and he started to saunter over--just as the elevator doors started to close.

"Oh, crap," I thought as I ran over to him. Too late. Although Sidney had successfully made it out of the elevator, half of his leash was still inside the now descending elevator. I pulled on the leash really hard to see if it would come free, but it was stuck! By now, the leash had started to tighten until there was no slack. I reached over to Sidney's neck as fast as I could to unhook the leash from his collar.

Phew--relief!!

Unfortunately, as the elevator descended, the metal clasp on the leash became lodged under the metal doors outside the elevator compartment. I pushed the down button to try to call the elevator again so the doors would open, but got the other elevator instead. I sent it down to the basement and pushed the down button again. Again, the working elevator came instead of the one with Sidney's leash lodged in its doors.

At this point, I took Sidney into the apartment and stuck him in his crate. Went back out to re-examine the elevator situation. Now the elevator had come back and the outer metal door was open (revealing the elevator door's mechanisms, rather than the elevator's interior compartment). The metal clasp of the leash was lodged between the metal exterior door and the metal track at the bottom.

Now, I'm not mechanically inclined, so I could see only one way out of this mess: brute force. I pulled really hard from a few different angles until the elevator alarm started buzzing and the doors started to close. I ran back into the elevator to hit the "Open Door" button and then back out to try to yank the leash free. After a couple minutes of repeating this process, the metal clasp finally popped out. What a workout!

Poor Sidney will probably never get on the elevator again!