In the past four months or so, our oldest dog – Rigley – has developed a fear of thunderstorms. Not that she was ever fond of storms, mind you, but when we were in Texas – she just got used to them. Now they upset her greatly.
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I suppose it has something to do with her age and the nature of storms in Florida. A thunderstorm in Orlando has *a lot* more lightning than a storm in Texas. Texas storms are fierce, with great gusts of wind, but not as much lightning. And… she's 14+ years old now, doesn't move around as well as she used to, and has more trouble hearing these days. I guess when the storms blow in, she sees the lightning and can feel the thunder. She gets pretty worked up – pacing around the house and shaking during the biggest boomers.
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All we can do for her is just to hold her and talk to her, but so far there is nothing that really soothes her during the storms.  🙁
When Cookie and Daisy were younger (much younger), they had no problems with the storms. At some point while Seth was in Iraq, they both decided they were completely over the storm experience. I chalked it up to age, too. At night (because for some reason, rush hour storms ceased to exist a few years ago) Daisy would park herself on my pillow and shake like an earthquake, and Cookie would just sit at the end of the bed and do the same thing. If we were still up, they’d both wander back to their kennels to hide.
Then something weird happened…they quit being afraid. It was the darndest thing. We had a humdinger of a storm a couple of weeks ago, and both dogs just hung out here in the living room with us. No drama, no shaking. I guess it was a phase?
That’s encouraging. I hope Rigley “grows out of it”. It would give both of us a little better piece of mind.