5 am, I am drifting peacefully back to sleep after my husband gets up for work. Suddenly a stench fills the air, then I am awakened by my husband.
“Velma? The dog just got sprayed by a skunk.”
She is still outside but I can already smell her. After waking up in a hurry, I send my husband to the store. “Gah! Tomato juice! we need tomato juice!”
I quickly Google to find out what to do…baking soda, dish detergent…we don’t have peroxide! I improvise and get her in the tub, trying to avoid her touching anything. She gets a bath in anything I can find - baking soda and dish soap, then vinegar, then shampoo, then vinegar again before he is back with the tomato juice. He is now late, and cheerfully informs me he has to leave for work now. The dog is coated with tomato juice. This one makes my bathroom look like a scene from Psycho, but she seems to enjoy licking it off the sides of the tub. My tub, shower, walls and floor are dripping with tomato, and it turns her paws pink. After a few minutes I rinse her off, then another shampoo bath. I cautiously sniff her all over, realizing that if someone were to see me, drenched and covered in tomato juice, sniffing my dog, I would be locked away forever. By now the smell has burned my nose and I can’t tell if she smells, or if it is me, or the air outside, or my house. I think it is her breath.
The phone rings. It is my husband. “You have to feed the dog, I forgot.” I throw the phone. While I am on the phone, the dog merrily unrolls the toilet paper and then dries herself on our bed.
Her eyes and ears look ok, so after cleaning myself and the bathroom up I leave for work. Now I sit here and all I can smell is skunk. It’s not on me, I think it is in my nose, and my lungs burn a little. Gaahhh!
But thanks for a tale that gave me a morning chuckle. I doubt I’d be chuckling if it was my dog, but what ya gonna do? Hope your nose gets back to normal soon!
Our dog still smells like skunk and it’s been almost three weeks.
I feel your pain Ours got sprayed at 11:30 at night just as we were going to bed after a very long day. So there we were on the back deck with the dog, a hose, and a bucket of peroxide/dish soap/baking soda. All the stores were closed so the next day I got the pet store deskunking shampoo.
My pack of heathens managed to kill every skunk within 2 miles when we first purchased this place.
I tried the tomato bath first with limited success.
Next I went to the “peroxide/dish soap/baking soda” routine.
Although both methods cut the smell some what, they still exuded eau de skunk every time they got wet.
What annoyed me the most was that being sprayed didn’t seem to bother them at all or discourage them from taking out next one.
They were awfully proud of themselves.
PLEASE DON’T FLAME ME! THIS IS NOT A JOKE! I’VE TRIED IT AND IT WORKS!
Massengil douche. Yeah, I know, I thought it was a bad joke the first time I heard it, too. Other brands don’t work, either, but it was amazing–I poured it on my dog and a mist of stench came wafting off her and vanished. She stank no worse than a ferret by the time I was done.
Ha ha ha ha ha! (It’s ONLY funny because it didn’t happen to ME!)
As soon as you can get a hold of your dog after a good skunking, is give them a bath with Dawn dishsoap. (Or any other dishsoap that “lifts away grease” which is, I think, all of them. But Dawn, for some reason, seems to work best.) Then you soak them down with a lot of the brown cider vinegar. (It works better than tomato juice. Again, I don’t know why.) Don’t rinse this off.
Now your dog will smell like a salad with just a touch of skunk. Yum!
To really get the stink out, wash him in dishsoap, dry him, shave him bald, wash him again in dishsoap and then soak in vinegar. Oh, yeah, it’s worth it.
That has to be the worst way to wake up… no, it’s about the third or forth worst way, but it’s still really bad.
Go for it, World Eater. I thought about coming in late to work too, but I wanted to leave Skunk House.
I’m not suprised at the douche suggestion, Dropzone. After some more searching this morning I have read suggestions of just about everything. It kind of makes sense if you think about it - I have heard of douching with vinegar and maybe it has a similar ingredient to vinegar in it (I think it is the same connection to vinegar and tomato juice that is supposed to work.)
This is one of those things that everyone has a remedy for. My first Google hit said “nothing works as well as tomato juice.” The next one, “Tomato juice does not work at all. Don’t use tomato juice.” Another site said to have the dog eat the tomato juice.
It might be worth it just to send my husband out to buy a case of Massengil. I bet he got a strange look buying gallons of tomato juice at 5:30 am, imagine what will happen this time!
After our dog got nailed by a skunk, we still smelled skunk every time his coat got wet from the rain. I’d say that lasted for almost a year. Fun times!
My friend’s idiot housemate never leashed his golden retriever. It always chased cats… and couldn’t seem to tell the difference between a “cat” and “skunk.” He got sprayed once a month. Idiot housemate still never leashed him. My friend moved out 'cause he couldn’t deal with the monthly skunk stench in the house.
You can get a product called “Skunk Off” that works really well. But basically, it’s vinegar and water. Bathe dog in mild acid solution (tomato juice or vinegar and water) and put some in a spray bottle to spritz and wipe down dog every day for a week or so. That worked really well.
Ours got sprayed at 11:30 at night just as we were going to bed after a very long day. So there we were on the back deck with the dog, a hose, and a bucket of peroxide/dish soap/baking soda. All the stores were closed so the next day I got the pet store deskunking shampoo.