The confusing world of Adams’

About 1.5 weeks ago I was getting ready for bed a little early one night, so I let the dog out, per our normal routine, and a few minutes later I heard her racing around on the deck.  We have plenty of cats that prowl the neighborhood, plus the momma bunny, so I ran and opened the door to see what she was up to.  As I opened the door, something whizzed by it, and I slammed the door shut so whatever it was didn’t come in the house (I figured that’s all I needed).  So great, she’s tossing around some critter (looked like a cat when it flew past) on the porch.  I opened the window to see if I could yell at her to stop (ya right) and see what was going on when I smelled it.  You guessed it, our not so friendly neighborhood skunk.  Great.. So she’s tossing around a skunk, who knows what it’s carrying (she has her rabies shots, but who knows what else it could have) and I can’t open the back door because I don’t know where it is and I sure as hell don’t want that thing IN my house.
 

So I run to the front door, grabbing my shoes on as I go, run around back and let myself in through the back fence gate, figuring coming from that angle at least I can see what’s going on.  She runs over to me so overjoyed with herself, and smelling absolutely horrid (along with the deck and the back of the house).  No skunk in sight, so I take her straight into the bathroom, check her for any signs of scratches or bite marks, but luckily she appears completely unhurt, just smellier than anything I’ve been that close to before  lol  She lost her “I’m so proud of myself” grin when I plunked her in the tub though.  One bath down, she still smells a bit, Chris happens to call and I have him look up some deskunking recipes online for me (why is he not home during her hyjinx??).  Just as an FYI, tomato juice doesn’t do much but dye their coat red and mask the odor; apparently it doesn’t actually get rid of it.
 

Recipe in mind (in case I can’t find a decent shampoo, since the puppy stuff obviously isn’t going to cut it), I toss her in her crate (she’s still not going to traipse through my house, now she smells faintly of skunk AND is wet), and head off to the store at midnight, hoping to find something at the 1 grocery store I know is open.  They had some “strong pet odor” stuff I bought, along with the peroxide and baking soda in case that didn’t work.  Got back home and prepared for bath #2 (by now she is the most pathetic, sad sight you have ever seen, wondering what she could possibly have done to deserve my wrath..  2 baths in one night, the torture!).  Since I was at least able to determine where the smell was still coming from, at least on this attempt I was able to just do those areas.  Of course it was her face and chest, so my only choice was the new shampoo (no peroxide by a puppy face please!).  Luckily it seemed to have worked for the most part; at least it made it faint enough you couldn’t smell it unless you were up close to her.
 

Off to bed we finally go, now it’s sometime around 130 I think.  She’s definitely sleeping in her crate, there’s no way a wet, possibly still skunky, dog is sleeping on our bed.  Of course she also hasn’t been crated overnight at home in a good year now and has just gotten done surviving 2 baths.  I have never ever heard such loud and pitiful crying in my life.  I think I fell asleep somewhere around 2am and was woken up around 6am and couldn’t fall back asleep.  Which was just as well.  I did after all have to go to Wal-Mart to buy a replacement collar and harness so I could let her out to do her business.  I still haven’t gotten the smell out of her tags and have scrubbed them with scalding water and dish soap, I may just need to get replacements, we will see.  Luckily we had enough rain overnight the first night so that the deck and backyard don’t smell of skunk anymore, though the garage still did a bit where it leaked around the door and couldn’t get washed out of the air by the rain.  But at least I was able to leave the windows open to get the skunk smell out of the kitchen (amazing how much gets in just from coming in the door once) and from the bathroom.
 

A week and a half and several rain storms later, I went to the pet store to get some shampoo actually made for getting rid of the skunk smell, as she still has some of it, and with each rain storm it seems to get a little stronger.  At least that seems to be getting the rest of it out, and doesn’t require a bath (though when it’s gone she will get another one).  Then, last night when I went to let her in before bed, I could tell she was digging at something on the ground and had something in her mouth.  After getting her in and spending several minutes telling her to drop it, she finally did.  Wasn’t quite what I expected (though I really never know what to expect from her), it was the fattest caterpillar (I think anyway, could have been an enormous grub too) I have seen.  Covered in dirt (whether from her digging it out of the ground or just rolling it in the mud I have no idea), curled up in a ball, and at least Chris was home to toss it back outside as I held the dog to keep her from trying to eat it again.  But at least it wasn’t a skunk.  So what have we learned?  Make the dog “drop it” outside on the deck, not after she comes in, and I hate letting her out at night period  >.<

This entry was posted Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 6:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.