A fast-acting doctor came to the aid of a poor pooch whose leash got caught in the door of a moving elevator in Tampa, Florida, over the weekend.

Heart-pounding surveillance video above shows Dr. Mohammad Awad racing to rescue a neighbor’s dog who’d been lifted off the ground in the lobby of the Olympus Harbour Island apartment block.

“I dropped all my food on the ground. I tried to break the leash open as hard as I can. I tried, I tried, I tried,” Awad told NBC affiliate WFLA.

“Initially, it didn’t work out, so I went back at it again,” he added to Bay News 9. “The dog is screaming, screaming, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, the dog has seconds to live.’”

Awad, who’d been returning from work at Sarasota Memorial Hospital when he spotted the dog being dragged into the air by the snagged leash, eventually succeeded in breaking the tether away from the animal’s neck.

“Even though I’m a human physician, I went and examined the dog, touched its throat, looked at it,” he recalled. “The dog drank some water. I knew it’d be OK.”

A similar incident occurred in Houston earlier in the month: