An apparent electrical malfunction in Montreal's Outremont neighbourhood has killed a dog and injured another.

Lily, a three-year-old foster rescue, was electrocuted on Côte-Ste-Catherine Road near Villeneuve Street Tuesday night while out for a walk with owner Kelly Downs.

It was the same route they always took – around McNighter Park – but something went terribly wrong in front of a lamppost.

"She just dropped to the ground right by the lamppost, and she just started biting at the clasp of her leash, and her mouth started to bleed," Downs recalled, between sobs.

"Then I started screaming for help."

The borough says the lamppost is now patched up. (CBC)Her neighbour Jeffrey Baker came running out of his home to help, but Lily was dead.

Baker was incredulous.

He said just 15 minutes earlier he was walking his own dog, Sophie, when she suffered some kind of electric shock while passing the lamppost.

Sophie – who is 15 years old and blind – survived the jolt.

"It's just not something that's intuitive, that you're going to be electrocuted by the sidewalk outside your own home," Baker said, theorizing that salt on the sidewalk may have acted like a conductor for the malfunctioning lamppost.

Officials with the Outremont borough confirmed that there was faulty electrical wiring in the lamppost, and that it has been patched up.

Borough Coun. Marie Potvin said there are plans underway to check all lampposts in the neighbourhood in the spring.

Lily was a foster dog. (CBC)