Dry firing happens all the time. Even saw one of our national lady compound archers do it at squad training - so focused on the shot that she forgot the arrow (personally I've never done that, but I HAVE tried to put an arrow in the bow when there's already one there a few times
)
As for the novel way of destringing the bow, she realised by the nasty cracking noise that something was up and stopped before the bow collapsed! Phew.