"I'm not suggesting that you and your dog become social shut-ins," Sorrel says. "Just exercise more prudent walking patterns and skirt, whenever possible outdoor electrical equipment -- street and traffic lights, fire call boxes, phone boothes, manholes, service boxes, newer delivery doors, and decorative lighting -- all may be energized year-round.

"It's a minefield out there," she says.

The mission of infraShock is to protect the public from the risk of voltage leakage (commonly referred to as stray voltage).

Last summer, the New York City Department of Transportation announced plans to place LED detectors on 150,000 light poles in NYC. The devices are designed to "glow brightly if the light poles become electrified.

But hot spots, including a good many undetected ones remain -- and dogs aren't their only victims, says Sorrel, who also writes a blog called Between You, Me and the Lamppost.

Humans, too, have been killed and injured, including a third grade teacher who, as the New York Times reported last summer, suffered brain damage when he was shocked by a pay phone located above an leaking underground high voltage vault.

Here in Baltimore, underground electrical cables at a ball field in Druid Hill Park were blamed in the May, 2006 electrocution of Deanna Green, a 14-year-old Randallstown girl. Green was playing softball with her mother and members of her church when she touched two metal fences - one with an unprotected post tip that had come in contact with an underground cable - at the same time, completing an electrical circuit.

The city said afterwards the cable would be inspected and replaced as as part of a "corrective action plan."