BELLA MEETS MEPHITIS

Does this look like a little doggy to you? photo from pdimages.com.

Last fall, there were many nights when Bella and I would go out for a late walk at a local lake. Fewer people walk their dogs in the cold and dark which enabled me to allow Bella to go off-leash and run about in this quasi-wilderness environment. As we were going back to the car, in the pitch black, Bella suddenly stopped in front of me. I squinted to see what had catalyzed her to put on the brakes. I squinted harder – I could just make out a small, black shape. “It is a small, lost dog.” I thought and proceeded to bend over and slowly move toward the little critter. (Fortunately, I had put Bella on her lease before meeting the mysterious creature as we were getting close to more populated areas.) I started talking to the little “dog” attempting to get it to approach us. Suddenly the unidentified creature abruptly turned and moved away from us, which caused Bella to bolt forward. It was at this point that I could just make out some of the creatures salient characteristics – the white stripes on its back and tail! It was the cute but odoriferous Mephitis mephitis - the striped skunk.

I immediately grabbed the cable lease (it was a retractable cable that I know can confirm are not good for larger breeds of dog – it ended up burning a deep cut in my fingers) and tried to pull Bella back, but it was too late. The skunk had adopted the squirting position and had dosed the inquisitive canine with its oily spray. I have read that they can shoot their defensive anal gland juices up to 15 feet. Fortunately, it had directed the smelly burst at Bella’s face and forequarters and I was spared a direct hit.

The skunk moved off into the darkness and Bella began “face surfing” – that is, incessantly pushing her head through the grass in an attempt to remove the nasty scent. Fortunately, it did not cause any blindness (it can apparently cause temporary blindness), but Bella certainly didn’t smell good. That said, I thought the odor would be more pungent than it was, having smelled dead skunks on the road on numerous occasions. Bella’s new mustelid perfume smelt like burnt rubber. Of course, the smell is notorious for being very difficult to get off dog, clothes, car upholstery, etc. Fortunately, I had a blanket in the trunk of my CRV and wrapped Bella in that and made her stay put on the front floor board. When we returned home, I tethered her to the front porch and ran to a local pet store to get some reagent made specifically to de-stink a dog that had been skunked! It worked well and while there was some residual smell on the dog, it was very slight.

A word about tomato juice: I found on an internet site when I was trying to find that this did not remove but only served to mask the smell, so I choose to use Nature’s Miracle Skunk Odor Remover. I found that it worked very well. I talked to my friend and dog expert Kathleen Wood about this incident and she assured me that tomato juice does work. She said her bulldog had been skunked on eight occasions and that on every occasion she used tomato juice and it worked (on one occasion she said she used a spaghetti sauce, because she was out of tomato sauce, which resulted in a bulldog that didn’t smell of skunk but of garlic!).