Hot spots in sidewalks and utility-box covers have gotten a lot of press in New York in the past couple of years, especially after the death by electrocution of Jodie Lane, who was killed by stray electric current while walking her dogs in the East Village. Apparently, her dogs suddenly started attacking each other when they stepped onto the hot spot, and she was killed when she tried to break them up. There was a loose wire corroded by salt under the utility box cover that they had stepped on, and the salt in the slush made it that much more conductive.
But usually, it’s dogs who get zapped. Many die, like Barkis, the collie mix killed a couple of days ago in Brooklyn when he stepped on a hot spot caused by Con Ed’s failure to actually shut off the electricity to a defunct light pole. Other dogs get a jolt. Last year, a Great Dane of my acquaintance named Odin was shocked on a slushy day very near where I live, and on sidewalks I walk Junebug over frequently. His owner didn’t know what had happened, probably because she was wearing rubber boots. She didn’t immediately suspect electrocution, because Odin had just had a major medical crisis — bloating — and this was his first day out in the park since then. The vet told her it was electrocution, and that had he not been such a large dog, he would have been killed. (Odin, sadly, died a few months later, but he was 10, which is ancient for a Dane).
This is something that just terrifies the hell out of me whenever I hear of it happening. I *know* Junebug isn’t big enough to survive it. What’s even scarier is that, while the usual culprit is a metal utility-box cover, in the case of Barkis, the concrete itself was electrified, probably due to the slush. And it’s not a problem limited to New York — it happens all over the country, even in dry and slushless places like Las Vegas.
I BLAME CLINTON!!!!1!
I blame Chris Clarke’s blaming of Clinton.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, and ask what some may consider a dumb question–has anybody thought of outfitting doggies with rubber booties? I mean, they make every other kind of thing for dogs–why not rubber booties?
In fact, they make rubber booties for dogs, and about a hundred people emailed me about them last week after I blogged about my dog slipping on a hardwood floor.
But you shoudn’t fucking have to use them to take your damn dog for a walk on a city sidewalk, I’m thinking.
Dogs also don’t really like wearing them. If you can get them on. But the salt burns their feet, too.
Shouldn’t this be “New York Kills,” or “Big Cities Kill”… I don’t remember anyone dying on the sidewalks of my small town, USA.
The physics are the same regardless, Mark. But people in small towns tend to drive more than people in cities, and there tend to be overhead utility lines rather than buried ones.
Five years ago, my fourteen-year-old cousin was at a fitness centre in Palm Beach, playing tennis. At the end of the game, he was running around, and touched a lamppost. He was electrocuted, and died instantly. The fitness centre claimed that the city was responsible for the accident. The city claimed that the fitness centre was, as the lamppost was on their property. The most galling aspect of this? My cousin was the THIRD person to be electrocuted by the same lamppost (first fatality).
Apparently no one’s learned a blessed thing from this.
I once tried to put boots on my dog. He’s big and fast (wolfhound-greyhound mix), and I got one on, and he freaked out and broke away from me. He ran around the house as fast as he could on three legs, with the offending booted leg sticking out, and then he went to his bed and ripped that boot right off and shook it until its neck broke, barking at it under his breath the whole time.
I think it’s probably a slow process of introduction and acclimation, but he won’t let me near him with those things now. The cat has adopted them — she likes to carry them around the house and leave them in my bed.