I didn’t need all the media hype to tell me we were in for a storm. I just looked at Ollie.

He stood at the top of the stairs, head down, gazing aimlessly. His tail drooped, yet his posture broadcast stress and anxiety. A dog’s body language can say so much, although I’ve been fooled on occasions.

“Not feeling so good, Ollie?”

He gave me a distressed glance and resumed his position. The wind had picked up, rattling the assortment of gardening tools standing in a trash bin on the porch. It was Friday night, well before the first flakes arrived in Rhode Island.

“We better let him out to go pee,” Carol said from the kitchen. This is a nightly ritual that Ollie knows.

“Come on, Ollie, let’s go out.”

He looked at me from the top of the stairs, hardly convinced. With some more coaxing, he came down. I slipped a strap under his collar and guided him out the door. Usually he heads for his pen, but not this time. He went for the car, standing fast, waiting for me to open the door. The car and under the bed are his two “safe places” whenever a storm is brewing. I pulled him away and led him to his pen. He stood there frozen, not even sniffing the perimeter, a ritual that is instinctively canine and precedes the purpose for bringing him out in the first place.

It wasn’t happening this time.

“OK, we’re going back in.”

I led him back in. He stood in the kitchen, eyes up cast as if he had done something terribly wrong. Not even a treat or the pullie for his favorite game of tug of war could shake from his funk of pending gloom.

“He knows we’re going to get hit,” Carol said. “He goes for the car whenever there’s a thunder storm.”

I had to agree, Carol was reading the profile.

But what can you do to sooth a dog’s anxiety? With no interest in two loves of his life – the pullie and food – we decided the best thing was simply to act naturally and hope he’d shake off the malaise. He resumed his post at the top of the stairs. We went about fixing dinner. He didn’t even come down to follow our every move, as usually the case. And when we’re seated at the table, he heads for “his” chair in the living room to wait for that moment when he hears forks scrape on our plates and he can expect the scraps. Not this time.

He was upstairs, not far from a bed and a place to seek shelter.

Then the phone rang. We knew from caller ID it was Ted. Ted is always up on the weather. From his phone apps he can relate such vital real-time information as the wind gusts and temperature at monitoring stations across the state, and projections on what is coming our way.

I put him on speaker so both of us could get the full report.

“Are you ready?” I asked picking up the receiver.

“Couldn’t get the snow blower into the car,” he reported with distinct annoyance. He’d broken down and bought a snow blower, but now he’d have to wait for delivery and hopefully it would arrive before the storm. I wished him luck.

“But we’re not supposed to get that much, are we?”

Ted launched into the complete forecast, drawing upon the latest readings gleaned from monitors up and down the east coast. He delivered his report, his voice clearly audible from the speaker.

Then from the top of the stairs came a prolonged howl from our rescued coon hound.

Our weather dog knows. He just wanted to make sure Ted had it correct.