When I was visiting Berlin several years ago, I was walking past Hermannplatz Station to meet up with a friend for breakfast. I was on the opposite side of the street from the station entrance/elevators when I noticed some commotion near one of the elevator doors. I went over to see if everything was cool but I was horrified to find three small dogs being pulled down by their collars into the closed elevator doors. They were flailing for dear life as the elevator had started to go down to the platform with their collars still attached, which was strangling all three of them. There were people around but either they didn’t notice or didn’t know what to do. I quickly bent down to them and started digging my thumbs under the collars to pry them off and was thankfully able to get two without too much issue. But the third dog was proving much more difficult. It’s possible the elevator had gone further down in that short time. I used all of my strength to try and get the extremely tight collar off but I just couldn’t get my fingers underneath. The dog was losing strength and I stopped hearing its wheezing, desperate voice. I turned around and there were a few people behind me screaming and yelling out of horror. I don’t know German and it seemed that everyone there couldn’t speak English; I made a sign for a scissors but nobody seemed to have anything sharp. But in that moment an older gentleman quickly bent down and pulled out his pocket knife. He was thankfully able to cut the collar off for the third.
After all of that, I just sat there with these three tiny dogs all climbing into my lap shivering and still breathing heavily. I stayed with them for a bit until two police officers showed up (who also didn’t speak much english or just chose not to). The group of people that formed around the elevators were holding the dogs and I just kinda left at that point. Seeing that the dogs were good and that the police showed up and were talking to the locals, I just left to meet up with my friend. We had a nice breakfast after that.
And I’m so grateful for the man with the pocket knife. I think my head would be in a very different place at this point had it gone the other way.