When things get to be a habit, they become annoying and can mean danger. Humans feel a shiver up their spine when loud thunder and suspiciously very near bolts of lightning come. Though we rarely show our discomfort and just find something to busy ourselves with, our pets are very different. There is no hand-holding effective enough to calm a pet dog that has been encouraged to stay scared. I use the word encouraged since pets do take a cue from their owners if their behavior is acceptable. To not have this problem, storm training your pet can be done the soonest. If you are in an area which is in the path of a storm always, this would help a lot.

You'll need several artificial environmental soundtracks (CD's are okay but a DVD showing a hurricane is more believable!) to train your pet. Start training by having playtime with your pet, make it special from regular playtime by bringing out a specific toy or a very special treat (not your ordinary day treat, okay). To assure your pet more of its safety, get some family members to help in this. After a few minutes of special playtime, get someone to play the storm soundtrack at a low but discernible volume. Now, the new sound will make your pet a bit flighty so keep him collected with a down/stay command while members of your family go on as if nothing is happening. Be sure to reward your pet when it doesn't show fear, ignore your pet when it starts to show fright and lower the volume a notch. As the soundtrack is played in different levels of sound, you and your family must ignore it too. Experts say that dogs take their cue from their pack, which as pets means the family. Once it sees the family not moved by the storm it gets less scared of the sound. To make it more realistic, you can have a visual of how a storm is like playing your TV for your pet to associate the sound with what it may see in actual storms. Increase the volume a bit at a time until your pet show signs of ignoring the noise at all. Have several run-throughs of this and by the time the real storm comes, your pet will be a as cool as Brad Pitt.