COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) -
The Rivera's 8-year-old daughter is not having a good day. She nervously hovers around her parents, William and Dayana, as little girls do. There is a sadness about her.
The family is outside their home as William and Dayana pick up and place the corpses of their two dogs, Boo and Cody, into a wheel barrow and move them to a makeshift grave in the backyard.
Realizing the macabre nature of the moment, the parents tell their little girl to go sit on the front porch. She complies, and has a seat while folding her arms and sighing.
William discovered the dogs in the backyard last night.
"He approached them and saw that their ears were pointed up, so that's when he knew it must have been that they got electrocuted because they were really stiff and they weren't breathing," Dayana said.
The family has had Boo, a Scottish Terrier, for 5 years and Cody, a chocolate Labrador mix, for 2 years. Rivera says she didn't realize Tuesday night's storm would end up taking the dogs' lives.
"They were both far away from each other," Dayana said. "Lightning struck right in the middle of both of them and shocked both of them, so it's just crazy how it happened."
Dayana now wants her family's loss to serve as a cautionary tale for other dog owners.
"No one ever thinks, 'Well, my dog's outside using the restroom, lightning is going to strike them dead' and that's a perfect example. It just happened out of the blue," Dayana said.
The Rivera's 8-year-old remains on the front porch, but you can see Boo and Cody's dog house in her line of sight. As she fidgets, she takes a moment and glances over at the dog house in hopes that the two dogs are still there. Sadly, they are not.
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