A dog and thunder

[RAST]

 I had a pair of chocolate labs, the large male became terrified of thunder and lightening but the smaller female did not. Our house had a crawl space under it and he tore the lattice and hardware cloth entrance cover off to hide under the house. The plumbing was under the house and exposed, it would sound like he was tearing it out under there during a late night thunderstorm so I blocked the entrance off with boards that he couldn't tear out (he tried). Feeling very satisfied with myself for a couple of weeks until my neighbor down and across the street made mention of Boss being afraid of storms and how noisy he was in her crawl space. Boarded hers up and he went to another neighbors old cracker house. I unblocked my crawl space and showed him.
 He disappeared for a few days one summer, I looked and asked to no avail. Then there he was back one day a few pounds lighter. A neighbor that owned a chicken manure fertilizer business stopped by and said my dog had almost knocked him down coming out when he opened the door to an old house he used for a workshop. I asked him if there had been a thunderstorm last time he left the door to it open and of course there had. Good thing my neighbors liked me.   

[Wandering Man]

Wow, that's scary.

We planned ahead this year and booked an RV space nearby for Sunday and Monday nights.

We should have booked Saturday two.  The folks who own the property behind us invited all of their relatives and hired a professional to come in and give them a fireworks show.  Fortunately, they only shot off fireworks from 8 to 10.  The 10 pm finale was spectacular.  We first thought all of their supply was going off at once.  We went out our back door and saw that it was a controlled show.  We'd never been that close to a show before, and had to plug our ears.  Frank stopped barking when we went outside, but the poor little guy was trembling when we came back in the house. 

I think they put the rest of the neighborhood to shame, because we didn't hear anything exploding after that.

Sunday night, we left the house as soon as the first fireworks started, and spent the night in our trailer.

Monday night, no one was shooting anything, so we got to stay home.

I'm pretty sure that if Frank was an "outdoors dog" he would be living in another county by now.

[RAST]

The campgrounds shoot them off here.

[Bakersdozen]

The first 4th of July, after we adopted our Terrier mix, the fireworks started going off. He looked at me to see what my reaction was.  I did nothing.  Reading my cues, he did nothing.  He was about a year old at that time.  He still does not react and we are so thankful that he remains oblivious to the noise.  We have had dogs that were scared to death and would cry and cry looking for comfort. 
This year I think people drove to my neighborhood to set off fireworks.  They are illegal. I remember setting off fireworks as a kid, but how old is old enough to grow out of it?

[RAST]

Currently have two Chihuahua's. One is scared, one is not. we did not reaffirm his fear when it started. He is easy to deal with at least, just wants in your lap and trembles.  And now I'm wondering how he is gonna do with this storm coming right in here tonight.

[Bakersdozen]

Poor dogs.  They all have different personalities and no amount of encouragement from us will keep them from being scared.  I used to give our Bassett some type of calming drops.  The drops did help.