Last night we had a thin but powerful line of storms move through the area. The weathermen had been talking about them all evening, so there was plenty of warning. It turned out to be mostly a wind event with some rain (I only got .36 inches at the house, and my weather station recorded a peak gust of 35, but I think they were higher than that) and amazingly no thunder. Things have been so dry here for so long (at this writing, no major precipitation since the middle of November 2008, and we're 3.9 inches behind for the year already with only 0.67" before last night's storms since Jan 1), this was the first big weather event Dizzie would experience since coming here. She's still afraid of the stairs - and a lot of other stuff - but I've been making progress little by little with her.
At first, any time I'd approach the stairs, she would run into the other room. Now she stands at the bottom and watches me go up. I even coaxed her to get her front paws up on the stiars with no help, but that's a far as she would go. With the storms coming, I knew she'd want to be with me and not by herself downstairs. Because of the hour the storms would hit (about 1 in the morning), I knew I'd want to be in bed, too. So early in the evening yesterday I started working hard on her to come up the stairs. She wouldn't, but I could tell she wanted to really bad. So in the interest of her feeling safe and me getting some sleep, I carried her all the way up so she could be with me when the storms came through.
And when they did, I had a 7.6 magnitude bed quake going. 
When the storms passed, she calmed down and we both went to sleep. She stayed on the bed with me all night. When morning came, I was dreading having to carry her down - going up is hard enough, but going down is both hard AND perilous. I let her explore the upstairs in daylight, but when I went downstairs, she didn't want to come. I came down and did a few things and left her up there for 20 minutes or so. When I checked on her, she was laying at the top of the stairs with her paws haning over the first step. I went up to the landing, and she got up and went down the hall. I pet her through the banister and then called her. Amazingly, she walked right to the head of the stairs, crouched, then put her paws down onto the first step. Then the next step, then the next. She made it all the way down to the landing and took a break. I praised her then moved down to the ground floor and called her again. She went all the way down to the ground floor without me having to touch her.
Daddy's so proud! 