West Vancouver dog suffers electrical shocks on sidewalk at Park Royal mall

Benny is a 200 pound Leonberger with a very calm, gentle demeanour. So when the five-year-old dog started thrashing and yelping on a sidewalk outside Park Royal mall in West Vancouver last Saturday, his owner Teresa Bouchard knew something was seriously wrong.

“All of a sudden he just started yelping so loud, threw himself on the ground, started doing body rolls, started screaming. It was honestly like scream barking, it was so horrific,” said Bouchard.

As she was trying to help Benny, Bouchard noticed she felt small jolts of electricity whenever she touched him.

“There was salt everywhere, and I thought 'is this a new type of chemical salt, like what is this?' It’s got electricity in it. I was trying to wipe it off his paws, but he was thrashing like a bull,” she said.

Eventually a man helped Bouchard get Benny into her SUV and she took the terrified pooch to an emergency vet. The dog will be okay, but Bouchard also required medical care. When Benny was thrashing and yelping on the sidewalk, he bit down hard on her hand, which he would normally never do.

Bouchard began to suspect her dog had suffered electrical shocks on the sidewalk. She says it took four days of pestering and taking her story public for Park Royal management to find and fix the problem.

“They brought in an electrician who investigated and found there was a ground fault, a ground break, and it was related to a metal pole that was right in front of Chipotle,” said Bouchard.

Three days after Benny was shocked, the same thing happened to a dog named Titan on a sidewalk in downtown Vancouver. Both times, the sidewalk had been salted because of the snow.

Michael Wrinch, an electrical engineer with Hedgehog Technologies, explained salt water is a very good conductor. While people wearing rubber-soled shoes likely wouldn’t feel the electricity in the sidewalk, dogs with bare paws are particularly vulnerable.

“When you mix clogged drains with a good conductor and water pooling there and people walking around with their animals, unfortunately if there is a problem, which is very rare, this kind of event can happen,” said Wrinch, who is relieved both dogs survived.

“Just because a dog gets electrocuted doesn’t mean they’re going to die. But it is extremely uncomfortable, and my heart goes out to these poor animals and the owners who had to watch their animals go through the extricating experience,“ he said.

Bouchard plans to walk her dog in the forest or on the beach from now on.

“Basically I’m going to avoid all man-made sidewalks and what not if I can, and it’s best to be in a natural environment,” she said.

As for Benny, he seems no worse for wear. “He is such a trooper,” Bouchard said. “I feel like I should change his name to Sparky. Or Miracle you know, something like that.”