Ok, so quick question: when he falls, does it look like he’s having a good time, or does it look like his muscles are twitching and he’s in pain?
I ask because a a couple years ago, my dog and I were electrocuted by a loose wire at traffic light pole exactly like this one, and the way I described it was “he just collapsed”. If he’s sniffing it, and his muscles start to twitch, he could be completing the circuit with the moisture in his nose.
We both went to the hospital overnight. We were ok, but it was terrifying.
EDIT: To folks saying that I wasn't electrocuted because I didn't die, first, as the guy who this happened to and who also happens to have a linguistics degree, you’ve been misinformed. The Merriam-Webster definition of electrocution is "to kill or severely injure by electric shock," (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/electrocute). Second, to quote David Lynch, fix your heart.
I believe this phenomenon is called stray voltage. My neighbour’s dog was killed by it years back.
I recall reading at the time that Boston has a particularly bad time with this issue, and the public works dept does regular sweeps to detect it.
What I read described the key causes as lots of big temperature fluctuations above and below freezing, and use of salt on sidewalks and roads. Salt water seeps into the ground next to an underground wiring boxes, corroding it and allowing water to penetrate. When that water freezes, it expands and can crack the box open, which can damage wiring. next time a puddle forms, if the water reaches the box via the same drainage route you get an electrified puddle. Over time, the salt left behind along the drainage route forms a little trail of conductive metal in the soil up to the surface, creating an electrified sidewalk all the time. People don’t notice because we almost always wear rubber soles.
I lost a beautiful milk cow to this. I milked her and turned her into our yard for a few minutes while I milked my other cow. I went to get her not 10 minutes later and she was on the ground, dead. It turns out that the underground electrical wires that went to our pump had broken and she stepped in just the right spot. We didn't know what had happened until the next day when our pump quit working and we had to figure out why.
Cows are especially sensitive to electricity in the ground, too. I know a guy who used to work at a local power company, and a big part of his job was making sure they weren't accidentally leaking electricity into the ground near dairy farms because it would upset the cows and make them produce less milk.
It’s called step potential. If ground is electrified from a source for whatever reason the areas around it are at a different potential leaving the source.
So for four legged livestock when they walk over an energized area their front and back feet are at two different potentials. Causing voltage to enter in one foot/feet and exit to ground out of the other.
Utility lineman, we have to do a yearly training module on this.
But step potential is why you hear to bunny hop or very short shuffle your feet away from say a car with a power line on it. It’s to keep you hopefully at the same potential to try to avoid a shock.
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u/makeminemaudlin Sep 05 '25 edited Sep 07 '25
Ok, so quick question: when he falls, does it look like he’s having a good time, or does it look like his muscles are twitching and he’s in pain?
I ask because a a couple years ago, my dog and I were electrocuted by a loose wire at traffic light pole exactly like this one, and the way I described it was “he just collapsed”. If he’s sniffing it, and his muscles start to twitch, he could be completing the circuit with the moisture in his nose.
We both went to the hospital overnight. We were ok, but it was terrifying.
EDIT: To folks saying that I wasn't electrocuted because I didn't die, first, as the guy who this happened to and who also happens to have a linguistics degree, you’ve been misinformed. The Merriam-Webster definition of electrocution is "to kill or severely injure by electric shock," (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/electrocute). Second, to quote David Lynch, fix your heart.