Is there anything worse than your dog being a little too curious and getting sprayed by a skunk? In fact there is, having 2 dogs be too curious and get sprayed by a skunk. Twice the smell, twice the cleaning, and twice the frustration. This is the second time that our dogs have had the not-so-pleasant encounter with skunks. So if your counting, 2 dogs being sprayed twice, that's four times that we have had to try and get that horrible sulfur-like smell out of our dog's fur.
Our first experience happened last summer and was the first time that I had tried to get that smell out of anything. It was bad. They skunk sprayed our poor little 5 month old puppies right in the face. They ran around the yard sneezing, rolling around, and acting confused. I felt so bad for them. The smell was terrible. There were patches of their white fur that had turned a yellowish color. It was terrible. My sister-in-law who lives a block away smelt it immediately and called to see if we had let our dogs out. I told her that they had been sprayed and she all she could say was, "I'm sorry, that sucks!" She did end up bringing us supplies to help battle the smell and found the solution to our problem. After trying a few recommendations that we found online, she let us know that she heard that vinegar and baking soda helped to get the smell out. It worked good enough for us. They still smelt for a couple more days and the smell lingered in the house for a day or two after that, but it seemed help. I was hoping that was the last time I would have to deal with that. That was not a fun experience. But, like the first paragraph suggests, we unfortunately have had this experience more than once.
Our second encounter with skunks happened just a couple of weeks ago. I let the dogs out to go potty before going to bed. They ran out the door and over to their kennel. I thought they just wanted some water so I started walking over to open the door when I realized why they were really there. They started barking and going crazy. The skunk was inside their kennel! I have no idea how it got in there. The door was shut and it's a six foot high kennel. I don't know much about skunks but they must be from the Houdini family or they are excellent climbers. Luckily Ginger and Zeus responded much better this time when I called for them and neither one of them got a direct hit from the skunk. They both had the smell on them though and Ginger knew that the next hour or so was not going to be fun. She ran to the edge of the yard and laid down and tried to hide from me. Zeus was not as considerate. She followed me into the house and got into the living room before we could get her out of the house. Now the smell was in the house again and we had some scrubbing to do. It was about 11 p.m. when this happened and my wife was already asleep. She got up to use the restroom and was surprised with the skunk smell. She was amazing. She went right into cleanup mode and was ready to get this taken care of. I on the other hand did not handle it well. I sat in frustration for a bit and then felt bad that my wife was doing all the work. I tried to control myself but was quite frustrated during the whole cleanup process. I was being selfish and thinking about wanting to go to bed, not wanting to have to clean them up, and not wanting to have to deal with that smell for a days again. Luckily my wife was on top of things and got the remedy ready and started getting the smell out of our dogs fur. We had them cleaned up in just a few minutes and the smell under control. They still had to spend the night outside because the smell was still lingering.
Our second round with the skunk was much easier than the first. The smell didn't last as long and we were back to normal much faster. I think it was due to the fact that the skunk was young and he didn't get a direct hit on either dog. That was the good part. The bad part? We have recently found out that there are multiple skunks living in the field next to our house so that was probably not the last time we will have this issue. We are much more careful about letting our dogs run free around dusk and dawn as we learned that skunks are most active at those times. We are doing our best to not have this issue arise again. Unfortunately it is a part of being a dog owner. As much fun and joy as they bring to our family, when something like this occurs, it makes you remember the good ol' days when you didn't have to scrub skunk smell out of a dogs fur. I absolutely hate having to get skunk smell out of my dogs, but if that's the trade off for having them bring happiness to our lives the other 364 days out of the year, I will take a skunk spray once a year.
No comments:
Post a Comment