Full Night's Sleep Tonight?

Last night we had thunderstorms. No big deal to us, but to Meeshka, a CATASTROPHE!!!!

I have no clue where or how she's developed this storm phobia thing, but thunder just sends her into a panic. She doesn't freak out and hide, oh no, she feels compelled to claw you. She claws and claws and claws until you go downstairs, turn on all of the lights and sit on the couch. Those are her rules.

I think it may have been a rough storm year during her formative puppy years. Typically if we had a bad storm, we'd go downstairs and sit in case it got really nasty. Since we don't have a basement, the downstairs is the lowest part of the house, and frankly its easier to sit on the couch and kiss your ass good-bye than in any other part of the house.

Apparently we must have trained her to such a point that whenever it thunders, we must go downstairs.

During hurricane Isabel, we thought we'd have to sedate her. There's just no way she'd be able to function, and no way that we would have any skin left through an all night storm like that.

Isabel came, lights went out, every dog fell asleep. Plopped on couches, they lay like lumps while we bailed out the sump hole all night. Once or twice they got up wanting to go out, we took them out on leashes, they got to the door and said "yeah, screw that I'll pee in the house".

So, last night as we're both dozing off, we hear the thunder. We looked at each other, and like clockwork, Meeshka jumped on the bed panting and clawing. UGH!

Having had my share of sleeping downstairs on the couch with the lights on, I said screw it and herded her into the guestroom (which is very dark with the lights off), told her to stop being an ass, turned the lights off and curled up on the bed.

She huffed and puffed and panted and paced, then curled up at my feet. Ten minutes later, she stuck her cold nose on my face, I told her to stop being an ass, she got off the bed and lay in front of the door and huffed at me. I was breaking her rule by not going downstairs, but apparently just being in a different room than the bedroom was good enough, and she went to sleep.

Of course, I slept like crap. We bought a crappy guest room bed for a reason (people won't stay long) and I hadn't changed the sheets in a while so that was a bit nasty (note to self, change those sheets before September's in-law visit... or not), but overall, I got enough sleep.

Hubby didn't apparently, it got pretty bad so he was up shutting down computers and eating leftovers out of the fridge, but hey, at least he wasn't doing that and getting clawed.

I hear Tropical whatever Cindy is heading our way tomorrow. LOVELY. Not only will we get clawed, but we'll get to find out if our drainage pipe work will keep the water from flooding our house. WOOHOO.