I am playing on my brother's realm. It's in Hard Survival.

I had originally my two dogs and 3 cats out in the open, my brother and his GF's dogs were underneath a 4 x 7 cobblestone(1/2 block) awning in front of their house, and about 3 inside the middle of of the home.

The first thunderstorm we got, my one dog was zapped and died almost immediately, so I moved the rest of my animals, including my horse, inside mine and my BF's house, having them in the middle of the home and my horse to wander around. (the building being about a 10x10 block home with a 2nd floor and the animals being only on the 1st floor)

All the dogs at my brother's home under the awning were directly zapped by the lightning, even tho they were in the center, but pushed up against the house. At my home, my last dog got zapped directly inside of the home, even pulling off some ladders off the wall.

Thinking it was just freaking coincidence that it targeting only those animals made me feel a bit uncomfortable having another tamed dog. Eventually after days of playing, I got myself 2 more dogs and put them in the corner of my home near the beds(they never got zapped again).

The second time we ever saw a thunderstorm in this playthrough, even though I was about 100 blocks away, and about 50 blocks underground, lightning struck my big fancy barn and killed two horses back to back. I rushed up and I saw what looked like a fire that started inside of where the one horse stall was and it was spreading out from there. It being night, I panicked trying to put it out while my BF rushed over to help. The second I put out the fire, I was rushing to go inside and sleep so I could fix up my barn before a lot of enemies poured into it.. (NOTE: The barn was 2 stories tall, and is about 16 blocks high, with the roof made outa cobblestone stairs. The 2nd floor was entirely a birch wood flooring.) As I was walking out, a lightning strike came down right infront of me on the first floor, zapped my BF's horse on the through the barn's roof and started a 2nd fire, about 4-5 blocks away from any opening. I would have taken a picture, but at that point, I was freaking out trying to save my two horses left to stop and think to take a screenshot for proof >_< I did fix up the barn as well for enemies not to come pouring back in again like they were while I was trying to put both fires out.

Is it just some reoccurring bug when it thunders, it's going to randomly target tamed animals? There's no way that it has, on multiple occasions, targeted animals, whether or not they were under a roof or or technically two. Because I technically have a roof over my barn, it never rains inside, so with the lightning randomly starting a fire on the inside, it's guaranteed to burn up my whole building every time. I have never had this issue before and I have a hard time believing that just only on this playthrough I'm that severely unlucky to where creepers will randomly spawn during the day with no shadow near as well just to blow my butt up when I just looked and didn't see anything near me xD That's a totally different thing I've noticed, but primarily, my issue is with thunderstorms and it causing way more trouble than I've ever seen it give me.