Couple Recalls Horror Of Seeing Dog Suffer Shock Walking Over Lakeview Manhole
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Bowdie the dog was looking good on Monday, but he was in agony over the weekend.
Bowdie was shocked while walking on a public sidewalk in New Town. To blame was a manhole cover at the southeast corner of Halsted Street and Wellington Avenue.
As CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli reported, the sawhorses were gone by Monday evening. But the unease among Lakeview dog owners will definitely linger after what happened on Sunday.
Dr. John Hanover of the Animal Hospital of Gurnee checked Bowdie's heart and lungs on Monday, as well as his mouth.
"He's got a bite wound on his own tongue," Hanover said.
And Bowdie's owner, Lina Schwartz, has a bite wound on her own hand. It came from the mouth of her 19-month-old dog.
"They go into fight or flight mode," Hanover said. "You know, the sympathetic nervous system kicks in, and they don't know what's hurting them.
Lina didn't know what was hurting Bowdie either. But the fact that her dog was hurting was obvious on Sunday morning when he collapsed.
"All of a sudden, my dog started to convulse and seize," Schwartz said.
So Schwartz tried to help.
"I went and grabbed him, trying to see, 'Are you okay?' and he lunged at me and bit," Schwartz said.
Bleeding from her hand, Lina managed to call her husband, Marc, to the scene.
"It was the loudest screeching animal I've ever heard in my entire life," said Marc Schwartz. "I could hear it a block and a half away, and that was with the windows closed in my car."
When Marc got to Halsted and Wellington, Lina rushed to the emergency room. Marc stayed to figure out what was happening to Bowdie.
"He was absolutely paralyzed," Marc Schwartz said. "He was stuck."
Bowdie was stuck because his paws had come into contact with an electrified manhole cover. And since no one knew what was happening, the dog remained on the cover for as long as 10 minutes.
Eventually, the dog was covered in a blanket, and only then was Marc able to lift Bowdie up.
"It was enough to get him off of the manhole cover," Marc said. "At the time, I didn't know what it was. I thought it was a seizure."
But officials later confirmed it was an electrical problem that injured Bowdie and at least two other dogs. The entire corner was cordoned off with police tape marked "Caution: Biohazard."
But Bowdie should recover.
"Basically, he's going to have post-traumatic stress, just like a person would from an experience like this," Hanover said.
Lina said she was traumatized too.
"The scenes from watching him writhe in pain, the scars from that will be with me a long time," she said.
The Chicago Department of Transportation is in charge of the manhole cover and the infrastructure involved. They were not available for an interview Monday.
The department said it was still trying to figure out exactly what happened at the scene.
