It was a catastrophic week for canines in the city. First a champion whippet, fresh from the Westminister Kennel Club show, escaped from her cage at JFK and ran off into the wild marshlands surrounding the airport, although she was reportedly spotted cavorting in a construction site. Amazing how the most pampered dogs will revert to junkyard-dog status, given half the chance. 

Meanwhile, Con Ed has racked another victory in its seemingly unending campaign to rid the city of four-legged fauna. A family collie-chow named Barkis was electrocuted in Park Slope, on a corner where a streetlight had been removed by the city in 1999. The same week, four tourists were zapped by a service box in Times Square, and a black Lab was retrieved after being shocked by a service box in Yorkville. Company officials continue to mount a PR campaign to pretend ignorance of the effects of insulation.

And a Bayside man, Otto Mittler, 85, died after his pet peed on 84-year-old neighbor Joseph Marsala’s azaleas, prompting anti-pet pugilism. Mittler fell, broke his hip, and perished from his neighbor’s alleged assault. Mittler, who lost much of his family in the Holocaust, left a devoted and grieving wife of 56 years, and a bereft miniature schnauzer, who was merely doing what dogs do.