We'd all like to think that if someone needed our help, we would jump at the opportunity in an instant.

Sometimes, though, it's about being in the right place at the right time.

A man saved his neighbor's dog after its leash got caught in an elevator door on Monday.

Johnny Mathis, 27, was coming home from work in Houston, Texas, and had just parked his car in his apartment complex's underground garage.

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Mathis lives on the ground floor of his community — so he took the elevator up to his floor.

As soon as he got off, a woman and her dog were trying to get on.

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"When she got on, I was looking at the dog, because it was a cute dog," Mathis told CNN. "I noticed the leash was kinda long, but I didn't think it wasn't going to make it on the elevator or anything."

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In the 39-second clip Mathis posted on Twitter, you can see him leaving the elevator but quickly coming back to pick up the Pomeranian once he saw the owner was gone and it was still stuck there alone.

Mathis said he yelled back to her, "Hey, your dog!" when he noticed the Pomeranian didn't make the elevator.

Y’all I’m shaking!!! I just saved a dog on a leash that didn’t make it onto the elevator with the owner before the door closed! I just happened to turn around as the door closed and it started to lift off the ground I got the leash off in time😭😭

— Johnny Mathis (@Johnnayyeee) December 10, 2019

"Instinct just kicked in. I just grabbed that leash," he said. "There was so much fur, that's why it took me a bit to get that lever off the collar — and when I did, I let go, you could see that leash just shoot off to the top of the elevator."

As soon as the elevator doors shut, Mathis said the dog's owner could be heard frantically crying.

The moment he was able to get the Pomeranian off its leash, Mathis said he kept banging on the elevator doors to let her know her dog was safe, but he doesn't think she heard him. "She thought the worst, that the dog had died," he said.

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When the owner returned back to the ground floor, Mathis said she was so thankful but still visibly upset — and couldn't stop crying.

"I think she just said 'thank you' and we hugged, but she was just so overcome with emotion," he said.

Mathis hasn't seen her since, but thinks she had just moved to the apartment complex, so he wasn't sure if she didn't know how the elevators worked — but there was really no way to know that this could have happened the way it did.

This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.

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