surviving the storm without her

The wind howled most of the night last night--we kept expecting the power to go out, but it never did.  We were lucky.  The storm I kept comparing it to was Isabel, which came through in Sept. 2002 and downed nearly 100 trees in my county.  We couldn't walk more than a block without seeing a downed tree--several of which had fallen on houses.  My theory is that all the weak trees cane down during Isabel, because we haven't had many fall since then, even during the past summer's derecho.

We lost power at about 5:10pm  (a Thursday), and I was so nervous about a tree falling on our (new) house that Raven and I slept in the basement that night.  I guess dogs know when there's danger, and they instinctively seek the lowest level.  But often she wanted to leave the house when there was a storm, especially when there was lightning or related electrical outages.  One evening she and I were walking in the snow during the Snowmageddon season (2010), and saw a small electrical explosion followed by a power outage in a nearby neighborhood.  As we got closer to home, it was clear she did not want to go back inside.  Somehow (I think) she associated the electrical burst with the indoors, and felt safer outside.  I kept telling her she was safer inside, but she didn't listen.  So I finally dropped the leash and walked toward the house by myself.  Even though she was a willful dog, she didn't like being alone.  So when she saw I might leave her outside by myself, she came toward me and went back in the house.  Where we were safe.