Dramamine Queen

For the past two years we have let our dog out back for late night bathroom use. Sometimes there are cats or raccoons in the yard and she chases them out but other than that our fenced in city yard doesn’t really get much action.

Until this weekend when she scrambled down the stairs to chase a big fluffy black and white kitty.

Up until then I had only seen or smelled skunks at a distance, which is how I prefer to deal with them. Skunk up close on your dogs face smells not like the familiar skunk smell that we all recognize but more like a big pile of burning tires.  It turns your stomach literally and seems to stick to everything.

Luckily she didn’t run back into the house and roll all over our bed or the sofa. Instead she ran for the front door and I quickly put on her leash while shouting “OH MY GOD SKUNK! THE DOG HAS BEEN SPRAYED BY SKUNK HELP!!!!!” although I probably swore a lot more.  We went out front where the dog rolled around in the grass until Jonathan came out with the enzyme animal odor cleaner and we started dousing her with that.

We were both just about to go out for the evening and the house stunk, the dog was looking rather sorry for herself and somehow even though I hadn’t been near the skunk (I was about 7 feet away on the deck.) I stunk of it.  It was also 9pm on a Sunday evening before a holiday Monday. Meaning my options for deskunking the dog were few. I went down to the 24 hour grocer and bought 4 cans of tomato juice, which  I’ve read isn’t the most effective de-skunker bug beggers cannot be choosers. She had literally gotten a mouthful of spray, poor thing and while I was out getting the juice she vomited thick skunky smelling jelly, which was so hard to clean up.

I do wish I had taken at least one photo of my poor dog looking like she was recreating the end scene of Carrie covered in thick tomato juice which I had forgotten to shake before opening so at first it was watery and then thick like tomato soup. 

I poured bowls of vinegar and set them around the house and put some on the stove to simmer. I’m not sure if it neutralizes the air or if it just masks the skunk with vinegar but either way it’s better. 

Then I curled up on the sofa with all the windows in my house open(except the back ones which you could smell skunk sneaking in through the drafts. ew.) it was only 10C out that evening so it was cold in the house pretty fast. I sat on the sofa in completely covered in a flannel blanket like some weird grunge ghost taking shallow breaths and trying to ignore the slight pains in my stomach that made me realise that I had somehow ingested a small bit of spray myself.

Poor dog of course thought she was in trouble(or that I was maybe doing a one woman concept art show.) and laid on her bed after she was dry enough wrapped in towels to stay warm.

Lesson learned? Yes. Always have skunk deodoriser in the house because a skunk will most likely not be around during regular business hours and no more late night backyard bathroom breaks.