Donderhund

It’s raining again, but the radar image suggests it won’t be nearly as heavy as the deluge we got last evening.

Pete the Aussie, as you may recall, is absolutely terrified of thunder and lightning and there was plenty of both yesterday.

He comes by it honestly. He was less than six months old when Morgan left him and Ruthie out on the back porch during a violent thunderstorm. Morgan was up in the attic, sorting through her stuff with the boombox blasting and was blissfully unaware of the storm.

It was no big deal for Ruthie, but Pete freaked out. People said they saw him streaking down the street, running blindly as the lightning flashed and the thunder crashed. He was gone for a couple of days. We finally caught up with him after a woman from the veterinarian’s office sighted him a couple of miles north of town.

A year later, he fled in terror when a neighbor’s bottle rocket exploded over his head on the eve of the Fourth of July holiday weekend. He was gone for three days that time.

Ever since then, he’s had an unnatural interest in the sky and spends a lot of his outdoors time gazing upward and barking at imagined threats. He senses approaching storms and hunkers down next to one of us when the thunder rumbles.

He attached himself to Austin last evening, lying at Austin’s feet in the kitchen as Austin emptied a clean dishwasher.

This is a portrait of a worried dog.