Well our beloved pup has earned herself a new nickname, although I think “Lucky” is also very appropriate. Dan and I flew out to Saskatoon on Saturday to attend my friend Melissa’s wedding. The most economic flight home unfortunately left at 5AM Sunday morning so after an evening of celebration and an early flight the next morning we didn’t get much sleep. Upon arriving at home and letting the Beagle out for her morning routine we all retired up to our bedroom to sleep a bit longer Sunday morning.
Now Hanna had already had a good night sleep so after an hour or so of napping with us she was restless and began wandering around the bedroom while Dan and I continued to snooze. After a few hours of sleep Dan rolled over to check the alarm clock and noticed that it was off, I checked mine and we deduced that the power had gone out. Dan needed to go and check his computers downstairs and on the way down would let Hanna outside again. Dan got up and called her out from under the bed, where she often likes to squeeze herself into and play with pieces of paper or cookies. Dan let her outside and put her into her kennel for the remainder of our nap. Upon his return he noted that the electricity was on in the rest of the house and that what probably happened was Hanna unplugged or switched off the power bar by accident when she was under the bed.
Later on in the day we were doing some clean up in the bedroom and went to turn on the main light and realized there was no power, Dan quickly checked under the bed and was shocked at what he found. Hanna had not been chewing on paper but on an extension cord that had been plugged into the power bar. She had made her way through the plastic casing and bit into the wires. We decided she must have tripped the breaker but could not have actually bitten into the wire, perhaps it broke and tripped while she was chewing.
Anyways, Dan went downstairs to reset the breaker and quickly found out that that not what happened, no breaker had been thrown. He went back upstairs to the bedroom and found the Ground Fault Interrupter (GFI), which had been tripped. This interrupter is used in bathrooms so that is any electrical appliance gets dropped in water you won’t get electrocuted. The big breaker in the house wont trip as fast as the GFI and this saves your life. And we quickly determined is what saved Hanna’s. Luckily the bedroom circuits were connected to the same ones as the two upstairs bathrooms and so when she did bite through the wire it tripped the GFI as opposed to the breaker in the basement. Had it not been for the GFI we are certain that our little Beagle would be no more. She is one very lucky puppy and we are so relieved and have learned a valuable lesson….GFI’s on all house circuits. 