I've had two dogs in my adult life, and they could not have been more different. Gabby was concerned about, well, Gabby. As long as her needs were met, the world was just fine. She was stubborn, ornery, and didn't do a single thing you told her to, which is probably why she survived getting hit by a car and having an entire train roll over her and managed to convalesce from the latter in Tom Petty's beach house. I need to tell that story one day.
Sadie, the one whom I lost last Christmas (pictured above), was the total opposite. She was a thinker, my dad always said. Concerned about those around her. She wanted everyone's approval and adoration, and she worked hard to get it by never hurting anyone unless they threatened her family first. When Gabby was old and blind, Sadie helped her navigate the land. When my mom was sick, Sadie sat at her feet.
She was also intuitive. That dog knew when I was happy or sad before I even walked through a door, and she responded accordingly. And I always thought that's why she was so afraid of bad weather. It seemed like she knew a storm was brewing half an hour or so before the rest of us, and as it turns out, she probably did.
With apologies to my favorite meteorologist, Glenn Burns, Sadie's predictions were always far more accurate than his. And upon learning that dogs' bodies are like little radars, I understand why. Let's look at the science.
First, dogs can detect changes in the barometric pressure. Now, you may be thinking that you can too. I get it. When the pressure drops before a storm, I often get a migraine. It can also irritate people with arthritis and other issues that cause chronic pain or nerve sensitivity.
But take what you feel and multiply it, and that's what your dog may experience. It can make them feel anxious, stressed, and even frantic. They might exhibit behaviors they don't normally — panting, growling, pacing, hiding, barking, howling, cowering. Sadie always panted and hid in the most awkward of places. They may also experience pain, especially in their joints.
And they don't just feel the changes. They hear and smell them too. Research suggests that a dog can smell between 1,000 and 10,000 times as well as a human, and they have 100 million sensory receptor sites in the nasal cavity compared to just six million in people. Basically, your dog's nose is as essential for navigating life as your eyes are for you. It's one reason why we hear stories of lost dogs who travel miles to find their families or how they often detect diseases like cancer. They can also smell rain before we do, and they can detect the scent of ozone affected by lightning.
The human ear can pick up frequencies between 20 to 20,000 Hertz, while dogs can hear between 40 to 60,000 Hertz. Ear shape and placement have a lot to do with it, which is why some breeds can hear better than others. Upright ears on top of the head can detect more sound than big floppy side ones. Dogs can also move their ears to help them detect more. In case you haven't noticed, we can't do that. Basically, they can hear rain and thunder coming before we do, which I think was a major reason why Sadie freaked out so much over storms. When she was older and mostly deaf, she stopped panicking for the most part.
Dogs may also detect inclement weather based on the static electricity that builds in their fur before a storm. Some research even suggests that this is the main reason many dogs hate storms. The build-up shocks them, which can be painful, so Dr. Nicholas H. Dodman, one of the most noted veterinary behaviorists in the world, says this might explain why they try to hide in those strange places as Sadie did. They're looking for something grounded — a basement, a bathtub, an enclosed space. This also aligns with what I experienced.
Throw in the fact that many dogs, like Sadie, keep close watch on their humans, and they may notice slight changes in your behavior or even detect changes in your homes just before a storm.
Whatever the science, I think this is something our ancestors knew long before we came along. Dogs have reportedly saved people from tornadoes, floods, landslides, and numerous other events for centuries. So much weather lore in general involves monitoring the behavior of animals to determine what's coming from the sky in the near future.
Related: The Surprising Mental-Health Magic of Ducks
Before we had radars, some would keep leeches in a jar, as the parasitic worms would climb to higher ground when agitated by changes in the barometric pressure.
Farmers often thought that if cows were laying down, rain was on the way. While that hasn't necessarily been proven, cows — and other prey animals — do graze with their tails toward the wind so they can smell an approaching predator, which is something many old farmers learned and used to make weather predictions.
The sounds frogs make can also help predict rain — they tend to get louder and more enthusiastic when rain is coming because it makes it easier to mate and reproduce. That's a fact. Allegedly, the browner a woolly bear caterpillar is that year, the milder the winter you'll have. Allegedly. The same goes for ladybugs. When you see them inside your home, it's supposedly a sign that cold weather is coming, but that may be more legend than science.
Whatever the case, it's kind of funny that with all of our fancy technology, many of us still look to nature to predict the weather. I know I do. I can go days without looking at the weather app on my iPhone, but I can tell when it's going to rain based on the behavior of the frogs and mosquitoes on my property, even my chickens — and, once upon a time, my sweet little Sadie. But I think that's symbolic of life overall. When we pay as much attention to the animals, the trees, the sky, the sea, and the earth as we do our devices, they provide us with a lot more clues to life than anything we can find on our screens.
