What My Dogs Taught Me About Sitting Through a Storm

What I Learned Sitting With My Dogs Through a Storm

Most of the time, my dogs let me know a storm is coming long before I ever hear thunder. They read the weather better than any app I have tried. Out here, most of our storms come through in summer and fall, and each season teaches me something new about how they experience it.

Both of my dogs are noise sensitive, but they show it in completely different ways. Carol is the more afraid of the two. She shakes, drools, and presses herself into Diego, who ends up shaking himself, often worse than he would on his own, simply from being that close to her fear. I can usually tell how bad a storm is going to be by where Carol chooses to hide. Under the bed means it will pass without much trouble. Wedged under the desk with Diego, in the smallest space she can find, means it is going to be a long night.

For a while my instinct was to fix it. Find the right product, the right technique, the right words, something that would make the fear go away. I have a whole list of things that genuinely help, and I have written about them on a resource page for exactly that reason. But the thing that actually changed our storms together was not on that list at all.

It was sitting down on the floor next to them and doing nothing.

The urge to fix versus the choice to stay

When you love an animal who is afraid, the instinct to fix the fear is almost automatic. We want to make the noise stop, make the shaking stop, make the whole thing be over. And there is a place for that. Preparation matters. Having the right tools ready matters.

But somewhere in one of those early storms, I noticed that my own effort to fix things was making them more anxious, not less. I was moving around, trying different things, projecting exactly the kind of unsettled energy they were already drowning in. They did not need me to solve the storm. They needed me to be a steady place in the middle of it.

So I stopped trying to fix it and started just staying.

What staying actually looks like

Not much, from the outside. I sit on the floor near them, usually with a hand resting quietly on whatever part of them I can comfortably reach, not petting, just present. I breathe slowly, on purpose, the way I would if I were trying to settle myself. I also focus on connecting to the earth and letting any anxious energy move through me and away, rather than holding onto it. I do not narrate the storm to them or tell them it is okay in a bright, reassuring voice, because dogs read tone before they read words, and a falsely cheerful voice does not match what they are feeling. I just let them know, through my own steadiness, that whatever is happening outside, inside this room we are fine.

I started noticing that they responded to my calm more than anything else I had tried before. It also got better with each storm. Over time I was able to keep Carol a little separate from Diego and let both of them rely on me instead of on each other. Diego settled much more easily once Carol's fear was not passing straight into him.

Your dog does not need you to have all the answers

If you are reading this in the middle of firework season or storm season, wondering what is wrong with your dog or what you are doing wrong as an owner, I want to say clearly that neither of those is true. Some dogs are simply more sensitive to noise than others. It is not a flaw, and it is not a training failure. It is closer to how some people are more sensitive to bright light or strong smells. It is just how their nervous system is built.

What your dog needs from you in that moment is not a solution. It is your steadiness. Everything else, the remedies, the safe space, the tools that genuinely help take the edge off, I have gathered into the Freebies section of my website, ready for you before the next loud night arrives.

But before you reach for any of it, know that the most powerful thing in the room is still you, sitting down, breathing slowly, staying.

Heartfelt,
Suzy

To find more detailed information and tools to use, please check out this page.