Dogs walking by the lamppost at the northwest corner of Cathedral Place and East San Francisco Street are getting shocked.

Santa Fe city firefighters taped off the corner early Thursday afternoon after a San Francisco couple discovered the problem.

Allison Taylor and Justin Jennings, both 27, said they had stopped off in Santa Fe on their way back to California from Jennings' family home in Burlington, Vt.

As they walked their two dogs across the downtown street corner, Reba, a chocolate Labrador-border collie mix "yelped a little, jumped, ran around trying to figure out what it was, and then ran away," said Taylor.

Buckley, a German shepherd-Labrador, "fell down on the ground," she said.

"It looked like (Buckley) was stepping on glass or something," added Jennings. "He was freaking out."

Taylor, a program administrator from the University of California, San Francisco, and Jennings, an architecture student, said they took their pets back to their parked car, thinking they might have stepped on something sharp. But on the way, they realized an electrical short-circuit might have been responsible for their dogs' behavior.

Back at the site, Taylor and Jennings couldn't feel the shock through their rubber-soled shoes. But they sensed the charge when they touched the base of the faux-antique light pole and the snowmelt-wet concrete with their bare hands.

A few minutes after calling the Santa Fe Fire Department, a truck arrived. Fire Capt. Linda Loleit and firefighter Michael John Harcharick felt around the concrete and decided to deter pedestrians from the spot by wrapping the green metal pole, street sign and trash bin with yellow crime tape.

But even that didn't seem to stop a pair of golden retrievers from jumping as they were led through the area.

"Vindication," sighed Taylor. "But those dogs weren't as big babies as our dogs."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.