BALTIMORE — The dog days of summer for Chona, a two-year-old pit bull mix, included a stroll outside on Wednesday that carried plenty of pitfalls.
“We were just walking back,” Chona’s owner recalled, “She actually had a terrible day. She had just gotten stung by a bee. She was not ok.”
And things were about to turn worse when she reached the irresistible waters of these circular fountains tucked out of public view in a Bolton Hill courtyard.
Bolton Hill residents speak out after shortage jolts two dogs
“She jumped into the fountain. She likes to drink and walk through them. We’ve been training her to get comfortable in water and so she jumped in there like she normally does,” said the woman, “and she like jumped up in the air and like projected out of the fountain really unexpectedly.”
Little did Chona’s owner know that other dogs had suffered the same fate.
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“I looked in. I didn’t see anything and at the time, I didn’t think about the lighting and that was electrical work in there. I just thought that her foot touched something that she didn’t want to touch. That’s what I thought, and then yesterday, my neighbor sent out a message to let me know that four other dogs had gotten jolted from being in there and to not let them in.”
Firefighters called to the scene roped off the fountains, and Recreation and Parks then cut off the power to them.
We’re told workers will drain them and troubleshoot the problem on Friday.
Residents aren’t sure if the electric short came from the fountain or other electrical work, which had been going on in the neighborhood in recent months.
Don’t blame Chona for being suspicious.
You see this isn’t the first time her daily walk has turned into a painful experience in this same neighborhood.
“A month ago we went through the same thing where we thought she got stung or maybe shocked after a storm,” her owner told us, “There was some wiring out on one of the public light posts and we went to Urgent Care and they were like, ‘It’s either one. It’s either electric shock or she got stung by something.”
