
I didn’t realize how much these little buggers actually do smell until last night. I let the dogs out into our fenced in heart-of-the-city backyard at 10pm, not even thinking to check if there was another creature already out there. The dogs ran out and it took me a few minutes to realize what was going on. I saw a white stripe and realized to my horror that a HUGE skunk was out there, and the dogs were on him.
It was bad, not as bad as it could have been, but it was bad. BOTH Paddington and Corduroy got sprayed in the face. We rushed them into the tub to wipe the spray out of their eyes and noses, poor girls.
If you’ve never experienced a skunking, you may not know that skunk spray is a limey yellowey green colour – so that’s good for telling exactly where the dogs have been hit.
We first wiped off their faces with a washcloth then shampooed them with their regular dog shampoo. After we washed them with a solution of baking soda and dish soap and it worked quite well. All of the yellow gone. We thought we were home free until they started drying and we realized that they STILL smelled. Next we will venture out to buy and try a professionally formulated de-skunkifier. There are all sorts of other home remedies that we could try, tomato juice, coke, mouthwash etc, but at this point I want to use something I know will work.
You also may not know, as I did not know, that skunk smell permeates almost immediately into every corner and crevice of your home. Our house reeks, our clothes smell, the carpet, the couch, even my purse smells like skunk now. It’s pretty disgusting.
Skunk spray is a viscous oil. It adheres and penetrates well. It will stick to and penetrate
anything that it touches. It also evaporates and re‐adheres to other surfaces.
So now the spray in the face from the skunk has morphed into a full frontal attack on every good smelling part of our lives – a little dramatic, yes, but now I have to figure out how to not only deskunk my dog, but my house as well!
Skunks may be cute, but I really don’t like them at the moment…
–more to come after we try out the de-skunking products–
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