At approximately 9:37 p.m. on Wednesday night, after watching the Survivor on DVR, I realized the dog was missing. I asked Jake if the dog was in Lily’s bed when he put her down for the night. No I don’t think so but she is on a bed somewhere was his response. But since we had taken Grace’s puke bed out to the shop that only left our bed and Lily’s bed, and if she wasn’t in either one then where the heck was she?
We mounted another search through the house looking for the dog. She wasn’t in Lily’s room, she wasn’t in our room, she wasn’t in Grace’s room, not on the couch, we were running out of possibilities. I flipped the back light on and she was at the back door. I yelled to Jake that I found her and opened the door – and the smell gave me an instant headache and I was immediately nauseous. Maize had been sprayed by a skunk.
She tore off into the house and by the time I got to her she way laying on our bed. I have never smelled anything so horrible in all of my life. And the night before – if you remember – I had to deal with the smell of puked up butter. It was like concentrated skunk in a bottle that someone had dumped all over the dog. I was seriously wishing for some puked up butter, or anything else nasty to clean up, anything but the skunk smell.
We finally got her corralled in the mud room and shut the door. We spent the next fifteen minutes googling how to get the smell of skunk off the dog. Most every website we went to had special skunk odor shampoos that they recommended. Seriously??? Who keeps this stuff on hand …….? We finally found an odor removing recipe that called for a quart of hydrogen peroxide, 1/4 a cup of baking soda and a teaspoon of liquid soap. While I still didn’t have enough of two of the ingredients on hand, it was more likely I’d be able to find them at the 24 hour grocery store than special skunk shampoo.
We discovered through the two smelly ordeals that Jake has no sense of smell, so he stayed to start washing the dog with whatever he could find and I made the trek into town to buy supplies. I doubt many people show up at the grocery store at 10 o clock at night to buy mass quantities of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. Unless they are going to make one freaking awesome volcano for a science project – and they are severely procrastinating.
Even though I was away from the house the skunk smell was seared into my nostrils. I still felt nauseous and thought about pulling over a few times to see if throwing up would make me feel better. I made it home without incident and as soon as I pulled into the garage I could still smell the horrible stench. I opened the door to the mudroom and was plowed over by the smell of skunk in a bottle. Jake thought it smelled considerably better. I thought it smelled way worse….way way worse. The poor dog was wet, smelled like skunk, and was desperately looking for a way to get back into the house.
We mixed together our concoction and Jake spent the next 15 minutes washing and soaking the dog. The good news is the magic formula worked for the most part. I could walk into the mudroom without my eyes watering and my head feeling like it was going to explode. You could still smell faint skunk smell if you got right down beside her and sniffed her neck, but I figured I shouldn’t complain while we were getting ahead.
The dog spent the night on our smelly comforter (remember she originally got sprayed then ran and jumped on our bed and laid down) in the mudroom. Much to her dismay. I spent the next 48 hours trying to shake my skunk headache. I feel for anyone else who has ever had to deal with this!
bluehouseredchickens 