Part 2 of the Storm Defender dog cape story was supposed to be about the big storm that came thundering in and whether the Storm Defender dog cape kept our dog calm during the storm. The story, however, took a different sort of twist.

Whereas thunder and lightning storms had been rolling into Georgia almost daily before the Storm Defender arrived in Storm Defender Dog Cape – Part 1, once the dog storm jacket arrived the clouds parted and the sun came out. For three weeks there wasn’t even a hint of a storm to try out the Storm Defender on. We made the joke that the Storm Defender must have worked like an anti-rainmaker by preventing thunderstorms from coming in the first place.

Remember the stories of the rainmakers of old, breezing into town with promises that they could make it rain for a small fee? Our Storm Defender dog jacket seemed to work in the opposite, keeping the storms away.

After three weeks of clear blue skies it was time for us to take a road trip with our dogs. We scoped out the weather at our destination so that we’d know how to pack and according to the weatherman, our vacation spot had at least two days of thunderstorms during our visit. I decided that the Storm Defender dog cape needed to go with us and I packed it just in case.

The day we arrived brought sunshine and blue skies as expected. The storms weren’t scheduled to blow in for another day so we enjoyed the balmy summer weather knowing we’d get rained out for the rest of our days there.

Day 2 started out with clear sunny skies and not a cloud to be seen. I kept waiting for the storm clouds to materialize but they did not. Day 3 brought the same: sunshine, clear blue skies and not a drop of rain.

We had arrived on a Saturday and stayed until Wednesday, leaving Wednesday morning for the road trip back home to Georgia. We had sunshine for all of the days we were there. Just as our weatherman in Georgia had done, the weatherman at our vacation spot had predicted thunderstorms and the Storm Defender dog cape had kept them away.

The first thing I did when we got home was to check the weather forecast. It was just after midnight and the day was scheduled to be sunny and clear. The following day however, had that nifty little lightning cloud icon we’d been chasing after since the Storm Defender dog cape had arrived. This time we’d get to try it out for sure.

As promised, the day was sunny and clear. I checked the weather again just before bed fully expecting to see the thunderstorm icon but this time, it was gone. The thunderstorm prediction had completely vanished and the rest of the week predicts beautiful sunny skies. The 10-day forecast shows three thunder and lightning storms next week but I’ve given up on believing the weatherman.

Almost five weeks have passed since the Storm Defender dog jacket arrived and not a week has gone by without predictions of thunder and lightning storms wherever we are. Not one of the storms has materialized. So far the Storm Defender is worth its weight in gold for keeping the storms away, especially on our vacation when we had a few days at home after the road trip.

As the Storm Defender dog cape comes with a full money-back guarantee, we’re hoping that there isn’t a time limit on the guarantee. You need to try it for at least three storms before returning it for a refund but there isn’t a reference such as a “30-day money back guarantee” so we don’t know what happens if there simply are no thunder and lightning storms for an extended period.

When the rainstorms finally do arrive, we’ll post Part 3 of the Storm Defender story. We absolutely believe that the Storm Defender dog cape will give our dog relief from her fears by preventing the build up of static electricity around her, but until the thunder and lightning storms materialize, all we can offer is to say Stay Tuned for Storm Defender Dog Cape – Part 3…

Dakota was a semi-adult shelter dog who was the Queen of Bad Behavior and the Master of Dirty Tricks. Bad Dog to Best Friend takes you from Dakota’s awful beginnings to her amazing transformation.

Bad Dog to Best Friend: The Book The Transformation of Dakota Available in Paperback & Kindle

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Category: Dog Tails of Adventure

I couldn’t tell you when our dog’s storm fears began, only that it wasn’t always like this. Dakota had become deathly afraid of storms. One theory was that the lightning strike we had a couple years earlier was the trigger. It hit very close to our house and took out many of our electronics, but Dakota’s fear snuck up on us so quietly that we really couldn’t pinpoint the origin; we could only make guesses.

It started benignly. We’d go to bed and wake up in the middle of a bad thunderstorm to find our dog sitting with her head resting on the edge of the bed. Dogs are not allowed on our bed so it was as close as she could get to us. Dakota did not whine, bark, or wake us up. She simply sat quietly with her head resting on the edge of the bed.

I had instituted the rule never to pet dogs from bed to prevent them from bugging us in bed and waking us up, but my husband did not abide that rule and Dakota usually sat on his side of the bed where she was most likely to be petted if he did indeed wake up.

Our dog did this for months and as she didn’t actively disturb us, we let her be. We made the mistake many dog owners make: It was cute so we allowed it; it seemed innocent so we ignored it. As with all unwelcome dog behaviours we did not nip it in the bud while it was small and it soon blossomed forth, growing bigger and more urgent with each passing thunderstorm. Before long Dakota had morphed into a dog who went into a full blown panic over thunder and lightning storms.

The odd part was that our dog did not appear to be affected by storms during the day; her panic was reserved for the storms that came in the darkness of night. We thought maybe the lightning was more visual when the house was dark, and that when we were awake there were enough other distractions to divert her attention. The previous lightning strike happened in the middle of the night, so we figured maybe that’s why only nighttime storms bothered her.

No matter how you sliced it the end result was the same. Our dog had become deathly afraid of thunder and lightning storms. She’d spend the entire night pacing and panting, working herself into more of a frenzy with each passing hour and if Dakota was awake, she kept my husband Bear awake. The floor next to the bed creaked loudly and her pacing kept that floor creaking for hours on end.

We’d read about dogs who became destructive during storms, chewing and pottying in the house. Dakota had come to us with these problems not relating to storms, just as her normal way of being, and we’d fixed her. It took a lot of hard work but we’d broken our dog from chewing and pottying in the house. She’d been solid for three years but we couldn’t help but wonder: What were the odds that our dog would revert to her old bad behaviours if she got worked up over a thunderstorm? Dakota’s fear symptoms were progressing and it stood to reason that potty in the house would be the next logical progression.

After a long string of sleepless nights where the storms just kept rolling in, Bear finally turned to the internet in hopes of getting advice to calm our dog down and keep her at peace so that he could sleep at night. That’s where he found the Storm Defender dog cape. He showed it to me, I think as a joke, as we discussed Dakota’s storm fears and how to deal with them.

We had already tried to cover a dog crate in the bedroom so that she’d have a “safe place” to go. As Dakota had never embraced the dog crate as her home, she had no interest in going into the covered dog crate. She did desperately want to get into the bathroom so Bear started letting her go in there, and because he so desperately needed to sleep he’d close the door behind her, leaving her alone in the bathroom. I’d go in and find her jammed between the toilet and the wall in the one room that didn’t have a window, so I figured she was trying to escape the lightning flashes.

In the meantime I read about the Storm Defender dog cape and how it was supposed to work. The official Storm Defender cape had a lining that allegedly shielded a dog from electrostatic charges. As lightning was one of the issues we suspected was bothering Dakota, this interested me.

The Storm Defender website talked about dogs wanting to get close to plumbing, which was grounded and somehow diffused the electrostatic charges. I was becoming more and more convinced that Dakota’s issues were lightning related.

I read about the Storm Defender dog cape in various forums across the internet. Some folks were praising it as having solved their dog’s fear of storms and they called it a godsend. Others said it worked, but that rival products without the electrostatic lining worked just as well and were cheaper. Right about then the mother of all storms rolled through the South spawning hundreds of tornadoes across several states.

It was April 2011 and the storms just kept rolling in. Superstorms one after another came blasting through the South spawning one tornado after another finally coming to a head in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina with us in the middle of it all. Thunder, lightning, tornadoes, and baseball sized hail accompanied the supercells. The TV sounded the alarm for tornado warnings, telling everyone in a nearby city to head for the basement. The tornado warning interrupted American Idol cutting off the entire performance of James Durbin. We wondered how that would affect his votes. Radar maps showed the supercells heading straight for us but somehow, the storms went around us on each side and didn’t blast us as they had so many others.

While our little town stayed in a donut hole and was spared from the great wrath, Dakota still reacted just the same. We could see dark clouds and lightning off in the distance and for the first time, she was reacting during our awake hours, not just sleeping hours. This particular set of storms boasted serious lightning and tornados, and her angst led me to conclude that she was reacting to the electrostatic charges building up in the house and the change in air pressure.

Bear draped a heavy dog blanket over her as she stood in the living room panting hard with chest heaving. Oddly enough, she stopped panting. The heavy dog blanket seemed to calm her down and it took us another step closer to believing that the Storm Defender dog cape might actually work.

We were getting desperate for a solution so the next day, I ordered the newest version of the Storm Defender dog cape with the electrostatic lining and which wrapped around her with Velcro. I’m not sure why they call it a cape as it wraps around more like a dog jacket. The Storm Defender cape was bright red like a superhero cape and we laughed and joked all the time we were waiting for it to arrive. We were not the sort of folks to dress our dogs in sweaters and jackets and booties.

The Storm Defender dog cape came just in the nick of time. It arrived on a Tuesday where we were expecting thunder and lightning storms yet again. I put it on Dakota in advance of the storm as directed, but the storm never came. It didn’t matter as more were coming over the weekend so we’d put the Storm Defender dog cape into use before long.

The weather man predicted thunder and lightning storms several days in a row starting on Friday, but the weekend came and went with sunshine and blue skies. That began a long spell of clear weather. Every week the weatherman predicted nasty storms, and every week he was wrong and we experienced sunshine, blue skies and not a drop of rain.

We laughed and decided that the Storm Defender did indeed protect our dog from the storms, but not in the way intended. The Storm Defender was so powerful, it prevented the storms from coming in the first place! It’s been more than three weeks since the Storm Defender dog cape arrived and there hasn’t been a single storm to try it out on. We’re still waiting for the opportunity to use the Storm Defender in the hopes of helping our dog with this intense fear she has developed.

When the moment of truth finally arrives, we’ll post Part 2 of the Storm Defender story.

Dakota was a semi-adult shelter dog who was the Queen of Bad Behavior and the Master of Dirty Tricks. Bad Dog to Best Friend takes you from Dakota’s awful beginnings to her amazing transformation.

Bad Dog to Best Friend: The Book The Transformation of Dakota Available in Paperback & Kindle

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Category: Dog Tails of Adventure

Start with a four month old puppy dog who is full of joy and happiness at being adopted into a home with a big, fenced in backyard and an Australian Cattle Dog/Husky mix (Ausky dog) to play with.

Take the dogs out to play high energy running games every single day. Encourage the dogs to play chase games outdoors and bowl each other over. Fulfill their need to play rough and tumble dog games together.

For best results, make sure your new dog is a girl dog and that she comes from an active herding breed such as an Australian Cattle Dog, Border Collie or Catahoula Leopard Dog. We chose the latter, a blue merle Catahoula Leopard Dog.

Give your new dog a month of good times and then take her to the vet to get spayed. If you don’t know what that means, getting a female dog spayed means performing a total hysterectomy. In other words, it completely removes all of her female reproductive organs including her uterus and ovaries.

Getting your female dog spayed may be a common surgery but it is by no means a minor surgery. The veterinarian must cut into your dog’s belly to remove the organs and stitch her back up with as many as three layers of stitches.

You are now under strict orders to keep the dog calm. Your high energy Catahoula Leopard Dog is not allowed to run, jump, play, or pretend to be a bucking bronco. It’s a good idea not to run her up and down flights of stairs either, and playing with her new Ausky dog friend is absolute taboo.

Now, stick an Elizabethan dog cone on her head so that she cannot chew at the stitches, rip them out, or cause infection or irritation to the incision. Keep the head cone on for the full length of her stitches, which can be anywhere from 7-14 days.

If your Catahoula dog is not on board with the new rules where she cannot jump, play, and run around like a madman, put her in a dog crate to force her to calm down. If she goes crazy every time you go near her, then don’t go near the crate. Distance yourself so that your Catahoula dog remains calm while her spay surgery is healing. Peek at her from around corners so that she cannot see you lest she start jumping around in excitement.

Now that you’ve driven your Catahoula dog totally crazy, it’s time to drive the dog owner crazy. Sit back and watch this poor little puppy dog who was once having great loads of fun as she stares at you sadly through the bars of the dog crate. Look at the sad little face of your poor woebegone puppy who is now wondering why her new friends abandoned her to this misery. Watch the days march by with the full force of the Catahoula dog energy building with each passing day, and no way to burn it off.

Watch in utter misery as this dog who once trusted you now looks at you wondering why you took all her fun away and won’t even play dog games with her. Look at the questions in her innocent eyes. Hear her whining, calling out to you, begging for a doggie game of chase or fetch or tug of war.

Panic every time you take her out for potty and she tries to buck and jump with excitement at being freed from the dog crate. Try to figure out how to calm her down lest she rip out her spay stitches and require a new surgery to repair. Panic every time she gets loose in the house and starts running around in happy craziness.

While you’re at it, do a few Google searches on things that can go wrong with dog spay surgery, especially when the dogs do not cooperate calmly. Once you are fully immersed in every possible thing that could go wrong, and you and your Catahoula puppy have been miserable for days, it’s time to set her free.

Remove the head cone and take your Catahoula dog to the vet for the removal of her spay stitches. Take your Catahoula Leopard Dog home and this time, don’t put her in the dog crate. She won’t have a clue as to what it was all about, but you’ll have one very happy Catahoula puppy and one very relieved puppy owner. Trust that she will quickly forgive you. Life is good once again!

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Category: Dog Tails of Adventure