Behavior of mixed german shephard

Question
Our dog is a mix of shephard and the other part is unknown.
The dog is about 43 lbs. She is very gentle and not aggressive.  She has lots of fears.  Her biggest fear is during the thunderstorms we have here.  She gets very nervous and tries to hide by "digging" in our closet. She
"paws" at different things. We don't know if she is trying to hide or what the reason is.  She literall shakes. We
talk gently to her and try to keep her calm in one small area with us until the storm is over.  Can you help explain this behaviour?  Thank you.

Answer
Hi,

There are many breeds of dogs, actually any breed or mix that could be susceptible to something called "sound sensitivity".   It is very common.  In working dogs, like police dogs or hunting dogs it is very important that they are not sound sensitive as they must be able to handle the guns shooting.  For your dog, whatever you can do to keep her calm is OK.  Close the blinds as well as the lightning scares her too, because she associates the lightning with the thunder as one is followed so closely by the other.

Hope this helps,

Lori