PeePee and Thunder (It's Not What You Think)

It rains a lot here in Suisse Romande and there is often thunder and lighting that goes with it. This turn of events has revealed to us heretofore unknown character traits in our two Siberian huskies, Moose and Tasha.

They are beautiful dogs - blond coats with big white plumed tails. Magnificent specimens that do justice to their wolf heritage. Here in Commugny they are greeted on the streets with unrestrained enthusiasm: Manifiques! Belles Betes! The french love their dogs, so much so that we have been invited by restaurant owners to bring them in to dinner with us - a very common practice over here. But that has nothing to do with the rain and thunder that have posed such intriguing problems for us.

The first good thunderstorm freaked Moose and Tasha out so much (they were both outside when the evening storm started) that Tasha managed to crawl into the house through a cat door barely big enough to squeeze a bread loaf through, and Moose pushed through some wire fencing and jumped off a seven foot high ledge so he could beg to get in at the front door.

Once they were in Moose proceeded to stand next to the bed on my wife's side and try to persuade her to let him crawl under the covers with her. He kept trying to nose his way in the bed. That's cute when the cat does it but a seventy pound drooly, dog-breathy, panting, wet, muddy husky is no bedroom charmer,  and we had to sternly order him to lie down, which he finally did. Over the next hour he managed to worm his head underneath the six inch space beneath our bed and lay huddled there all night.

Tasha, we discovered, just finds it too wet to go tinkle outside and waits, for hours if needs be, until our attention is diverted and then sneaks into some hidden corner of the house to go pee pee. When we stand at the door and order to go outside she sits forlornly at the door, ears flattened against her head which is bowed down against her poor little chest, tail tucked under her hunched behind looking utterly miserable as if to say "please don't make me go out there! It's wet! It's cold! I don't want to get my bottom wet!" When she does go out she slinks around in pathetic misery without going until we relent and let her back inside. This is a cousin of the wild wolves that once ruled the forests of North America as well as Northern Europe? Of course if she and Moose escape from our yard on a rainy day (without thunder) they will stay out for hours and get soaking wet and mud covered without giving it a second thought.

Luckily we have a service room in the back of the house with a concrete floor where we have put the pee pee papers for her and she happily sneaks in there thinking, I imagine, that we don't know what she is up to. Fair enough. At least she isn't ruining our carpet.

So this morning, after another thunderstorm last night, Moose lay with his head jammed under the bed and Tasha lay smugly in the corner, having sneaked into the furnace room in the early hours of the morning. We got up and I called them by their new nicknames: "Hey PeePee, hey Thunder!" They looked up at me happily, a little wag to their tails. Time for breakfast. Life is good!