Superzoey
Prologue
Faster than a speeding tennis ball across the lawn, more powerful than the hardest chew toy, able to leap tall hedges in a single bound.
Meet Superzoey- Dog of Steel. To best be in a position to use her amazing powers in a never-ending battle for milk bones, car rides and belly rubs, Superzoey has assumed the disguise of simply, “Zoey”, a mild mannered rescue pup living in suburban Atlanta.
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I’ve been spending a lot of time in the bathroom lately. Wait, no, I am NOT oversharing, it’s not what you think. Read on.
Summer brings lots of wonderful things. Flowers in bloom. Kids out of school. Smores by campfires.
And thunderstorms. Lots of thunderstorms.
Many of you met Samson and Zoey when I introduced them in this blog post. If you haven’t, you should. Samson is the sexy cat (literally) in the stroller. If that doesn’t entice you to read, I don’t know what will.
Back to summer storms… and dogs in capes.
Zoey is our 8 and a half year old husky-greyhound mix. She is incredibly loveable and quite spry for a middle aged pup. She loves to run, play ball (though she’s not keen on returning it) and, until recently, she loved camping.
We take Zoey to the mountains with us where she romps with other dogs, runs freely on trails and relaxes by the fire at night with the rest of us campers. Until one fateful night a few years back, she was a (bad pun alert) happy camper.
Then, following a bad thunderstorm while camping, she developed a paralyzing fear, for which we have found no remedy. It’s awful and we feel helpless. We’ve tried everything- Benadryl, melatonin, thunder shirts, thunder capes, and more.
The only thing that makes a dent is music therapy. Seriously, blasting some classic Eric Clapton and keeping her close (which is not difficult as the electric current from the storm induces a magical force that transforms Zoey into a canine magnet) have been our only solace when the skies go gray.
Along with music, she seems to prefer a small, enclosed space in which to pant, drool, shake and otherwise panic. This brings us to the bathroom.
So… “I’ve been spending a lot of time in the bathroom lately. Wait, no, I am NOT oversharing, it’s not what you think.” Get the idea now?
A small storm just passed through, no more than 15 minutes, a couple of thunder boomers and done. But in this case, size doesn’t matter. You only need a tiny tempest and the droolfest starts. So we retreated to the bathroom, Superzoey and I. I held her close and played some Clapton. Together we sat, Zoey panting, me comforting, waiting out the storm.
The incident inspired me to share what I am branding the Seven Stages of Thunderstorm Grief. Any animal lover will experience these stages with their anxiety-ridden furrbabies and I just want to shed a ray of hope that things WILL get better.
THE SEVEN STAGES OF THUNDERSTORM GRIEF© (by me, Mindy Levy)
- Denial (dear G-d, not again!)
- Pain (so worried about our pup that it hurts.)
- Anger and Bargaining (I’ll do whatever you want if she would just f’ing stop panting.)
- Reflection (I can see myself in her drool pile, and I look pretty good.)
- Upward Turn (thunder has a-l-m-o-s-t stopped!)
- Reconstruction (yesss, safe to mop up the drool pile!)
- Acceptance and Hope (that our poor pup is stuck with this phobia but we know better days are coming.)
If you have similar issues with your best buddies, I’d love to hear what you do to help them. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy some pics of Superzoey. She is a superhero to us every day.
Super Zoey in disguise as “Zoey”
Hello Kitty Zoey
Super Zoey!
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