My Sasha is 12 also. She's gotten much worse about handling thunder storms. We had a HUGE storm last night, started about 9 pm. I've never seen lightning happen so fast. Sasha's thing now is to bark at the thunder. It can be just torrential downpour and she needs to run outside on the deck and bark at the thunder. We put the TV on, on the loud side, and she seemed to do a bit better.