The Weather Dog

This is what I call The Weather Dog. Our dog accepted him immediately but our cat has reservations. He's been showing up at our house the past two months but only when there is a bad storm headed towards us. We let him in the house and he will huddle next to us on the sofa and shiver. It has never failed that we've had a storm roll through shortly after he gets here.

 

We've never seen him when the sun is shining and he doesn't show up if it's just a gentle shower coming through. We're guessing it's either distant thunder that scares him (and gives him an early warning of what's coming) or the change in air pressure bothers him and he tries to find a place to hide. Since he shows up here so consistantly we think he's an outside dog. Still, he's well behaved and knows a few basic commands (as one example he'll sit for a treat). He hasn't been neutered though.

 

He's in good health and is wearing a collar (but has no tags) so we don't believe he's a stray. We thought he was lost the first time he showed up and let him stay inside with us that night, but he was restless. He barked to go out at about 2 a.m. and then took off when we let him out.

 

He's now figured out he can squeeze through the cat-flap and will come into the house on his own.

 

After the storm passes he calms down. We give him something to eat and put him outside. He really doesn't want to go out these days but we make him. He always leaves immediately after we put him out and doesn't sit on the porch and cry to come back in. When he leaves he always heads towards a little community over the hill from us. We've driven through there a couple of times and stopped to ask some folks who were gardening or sitting on the porch but none of them are familiar with the dog, so he might not live in the community proper.

 

I told the wife we need to put a note with our phone number on his collar and maybe his owners will call us and we'll at least know what the deal is, but she's reluctant to put our phone number on a dogs collar and have it found by who-knows.

 

We've never seen or heard of anything quite like this but he obviously feels safe here so he's welcome.

 

The Weather Dog. Anyone heard of anything like that?

 

Not a dog, but I had an ex-girlfriend once that would show up whenever there was some sort of storm brewing in her life. Given that she was certifiably nuts, this averaged out to once a month. I finally solved this chaos problem by moving 1200 miles away... :rolleyes:

Had a chocolate Lab that was a weather dog - would get increasingly nervous as a storm approached. If it was a bad storm all 100 lbs would be on your lap or on the bed.

My 100-pound yellow lab was ok with thunder when we were home. If we weren't, she would butt open the spring doors of the laundry room and curl up in the laundry basket.

I have a Jack Russel like this, and as he gets older he becomes more and more terrified of any kind of loud noise, particularly gunfire (plenty of game shooting near where I live) as well as thunder. He’ll go and hide under the bed and hyperventilate. I often wonder how he ended up with this phobia as he was fine in his first few years of life. Whether we have inadvertently ‘trained’ him to be like this, whether it is just a natural fear that has got out of hand, I don’t know. Fortunately, he ‘ain’t 100 pounds!

Three storms ago the Weather Dog showed up but wasn't wearing his collar. We thought his owners might have tied him up and he slipped out of the collar to came here. He stayed until the storm passed and went, we guess, home. We've had two pretty wicked storms since then but he hasn't shown up. We hope his owners have realized he wasn't around when a storm was coming and are now letting him stay inside. We're waiting to see if he shows up during any 4th of July fireworks but if he doesn't we think the time he has been spending with us has come to an end. We still wonder what his story is.