Our dog met a skunk....

[YadaYadaYada]

I'm sure I don't have to tell you that it did not end well. He got sprayed right in the face at 11:45 at night and at first I didn't realize what happened as he came running up to me foaming at the mouth. I thought he had something in his mouth (he caught a woodchuck the day before) so I stuck my hands in his mouth to see if anything is in there and in the process got the skunk oil all over my hands . Damn it was a s***show.

Anyways we cleaned him with Dawn, peroxide and baking soda and today I brushed his teeth and inside his mouth with apple side vinegar because I read it could neutralize the smell. I swear though I can still smell it, so two questions:

How long will it take for the smell to go away?

Is there anything anyone has tried that worked to completely get rid of the smell?

 

[josieKat]

I've had the best luck with the solution you used, but needed to bathe a couple of times to really get the majority off. Our poor beagle got it in the face too, so we had to be extra careful around the eyes and mouth - I think we used a toothbrush dipped in the solution to really get it into his face and head fur.

He got sprayed under our deck near our a.c. air intake, while the a.c. was on. AGH. The house was unlivable for about a week. The dog took probably a week before it was only a faint whiff too.

 

[lissyflo]

I can’t even imagine what that smells like! Fox poo is the worst our dog encounters (entirely voluntarily...) and that smells bad enough!

I have no idea if it only works on fox poo, but ketchup apparently works wonders on bad smells on dog hair. I’ve never been brave enough to try it, but it’s been recommended to me by a number of seasoned dog owners.

Good luck!!

 

[YadaYadaYada]

@josieKat, is it not just the worst smell? Also it gets worse the closer you are too. So looks like we may give him another bath and maybe I'll do a vinegar rinse too for good measure. Beagles are so cute, love their floppy ears.

@lissyflo, right so tomato juice used to be the go to remedy for deskunking but now it has morphed into a concoction. I have never encountered fox poo, thankfully he doesn't like to roll in things just chase and retrieve hopefully next time he will leave the skunk alone!

 

[sarahb]

Stephanie, it is indeed the worst smell EVER!! When Pepsi & King were alive, we had a summer from hell one year. All 3 (Jack/Avatar, Pepsi & King) all got sprayed at the same time, multiple times that summer. And yes, we also had few midnight encounters as well. It was the worst. We learned to use mineral oil on their eyes to protect them from the peroxide. (Just a dot will do it right before you bathe them.) So sorry you had to go through it. The peroxide/baking soda/Dawn recipe worked the best for us.

Skunks are nocturnal & will avoid light, so we kept the outside lights on all evening up until the last bathroom trip. Then hubby would go out with them to help scout the yard. We gave many baths that summer....good luck!!

 

[House Cat]

Stephanie, it is indeed the worst smell EVER!! When Pepsi & King were alive, we had a summer from hell one year. All 3 (Jack/Avatar, Pepsi & King) all got sprayed at the same time, multiple times that summer. And yes, we also had few midnight encounters as well. It was the worst. We learned to use mineral oil on their eyes to protect them from the peroxide. (Just a dot will do it right before you bathe them.) So sorry you had to go through it. The peroxide/baking soda/Dawn recipe worked the best for us.

Skunks are nocturnal & will avoid light, so we kept the outside lights on all evening up until the last bathroom trip. Then hubby would go out with them to help scout the yard. We gave many baths that summer....good luck!!

Good to know about the mineral oil. I got the Dawn concoction in my previous dog’s eye. She was very irritated for a few days.

@StephanieLynn I always bathe mine a few times and can still faintly smell skunk for months. I think there is only so much you can do.

 

[Slickk]

Oh no! My little guy has been skunked twice and it stinks! Both times late at night too! What a trauma for us both. Honestly no matter what I tried, we couldn’t erase the smell for months, and it took until all of his hair had slowly grew in and had been groomed off (it took a few groomings). And the worst was when it was humid I could still smell it for months. So sorry....

 

[YadaYadaYada]

Thanks for the tip about the mineral oil @sarahb, I also didn't think of leaving the lights on, the really messed up thing about this is we are having a fence installed this week so once that is done they will have a much smaller area which won't lead to woods, like we almost made it lol!

@House Cat, is it not the worst most annoying thing, I can't imagine being the dog and having to taste and smell like that awful smell for a week or more, poor guy.

@Slick1, oh my goodness the humidity, I can't even fathom how unpleasant that was plus it always happens late at night, DH was in bed poor guy.

On a bit of a tangent we saw the woodchucks in the yard before dinner, mama and two babies and I realized that Merlin (the dog) got one of the baby woodchucks the other day
I think it was in the dog enclosure and he either chased it into the corner and it couldn't get through the wire and suffocated or he grabbed it and shook it. He has NEVER gotten a hold of anything before, he is an Aussie/Golden mix. The fence can't get installed soon enough!

 

[arkieb1]

You don't seem to have Nilodor which is a tiny container of stuff in Australia that you can put a few drops into shampoo when you wash your dog and it takes away bad smells but I did find this;

https://www.amazon.com/Nilodor-16-o...ords=nilodor&qid=1560207575&s=gateway&sr=8-59

 

[lyra]

We had a bad night a couple of years ago where all 3 dogs got sprayed at once. I just wanted to give up, I tell you! We used everything repeatedly. We used the special skunk shampoo, the peroxide and baking soda, apple cider vinegar. Everything you've tried, we just had to keep doing day after day. The guy in my avatar is practically bald IRL, and he was actually the worst off, because it seemed to stay on his skin for months and just waft up now and then. So sorry you're going through this. We do skunk checks at night and have solar motion lights up year round. I think that helps a bit. Our dogs are dumb enough to just run at skunks, I think most dogs do. They've been sprayed a few times, they never learn.

 

[stracci2000]

Gee, Steph, This sounds like a stinky situation!
Poor Merlin, I bet he's upset, too.

I have never owned a dog, only cats----can you believe it?

 

[YadaYadaYada]

@arkieb1, thanks for that link, I'm going to order a bottle so that we have it in case we need it although I really hope there isn't next time!

@lyra, goodness that is awful, three dogs at once?! We have three dogs as well but the little ones don't take much interest thank God. Terrible, let's hope it is a quiet year for your dogs and the skunks.

@stracci2000, Merlin was quite unhappy, he hates getting a bath but then to get a cold water from the outside hose bath, he was really not digging it. Stick with the cats, love dogs but man they are a whole other level of stress and craziness, maybe it's just because we have so many lol!

 

[SandyinAnaheim]

As a groomer, I can tell you that there is NOTHING that will eliminate the smell completely. I use the same concoction you mentioned, and I treat twice. It works well, but you can still smell the skunk proteins for months. I've even shaved a dog at an owner's request, but that didn't help. There is only one thing I've used that has shortened the duration of the skunk smell. It's called Got Pee? Odor Eliminator. Great product that is safe for use on pets in a diluted form, fabrics, carpets and synthetic turfs, as well as everything else. It's not cheap and it's not on Amazon, but it works wonders.

 

[YadaYadaYada]

@SandyinAnaheim thank you so much for the recommendation, will have to look into Got Pee? Honestly it's not nearly as bad as it was already but I'm betting the first humid day will bring it out. If I had to guess I'm betting he tried to grab the skunk and got sprayed right in his mouth, at least that's what it smelled like.

 

[Karl_K]

wow, small world my skunk told me she met a dog!

 

[Karl_K]

True story, several days a week when im out on the back porch getting some air at night a skunk with 2 strips on its body and none on its tail will walk right by at the bottom of the stairs and stare at me, I tell her "you stink" and she goes off in a huff.
We have a lot of mutant skunks here one even has almost no strip just a bit on the end of its tail.
In the summer its not unusual to see 3-5 different ones a night. There are at least 10 probably more in the area all with different markings.

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

im.finding this thtead fasinating and im.so.sorry for all the smelly pups
i worked in garden centers for msny years and in NZ the Australian bush tail possom is a huge enviromental problem here eatting many millions of tonns of nstive flora
we sold a synthetic skunk repallent for keeping away the possoms
it was sold in a tube inside a plastic canaster
it was so stinky i kept mine inside the electricity metre on the outside of the house

 

[YadaYadaYada]

@Karl_K, omg I can see someone mistaking one of those mutant skunks for a cat and letting it in the house LOL!

@Daisys and Diamonds, skunk scent in a tube sounds absolutely dreadful

 

[Karl_K]

@Karl_K, omg I can see someone mistaking one of those mutant skunks for a cat and letting it in the house LOL!

Yes that would not be funny but at the same time very funny.

 

[monarch64]

True story, several days a week when im out on the back porch getting some air at night a skunk with 2 strips on its body and none on its tail will walk right by at the bottom of the stairs and stare at me, I tell her "you stink" and she goes off in a huff.
We have a lot of mutant skunks here one even has almost no strip just a bit on the end of its tail.
In the summer its not unusual to see 3-5 different ones a night. There are at least 10 probably more in the area all with different markings.

I used to sit outside at night in the spring and nearly every night a skunk and her babies would come scuttling right past me, underneath the porch light. I think they're adorable, but neither me nor my pets have ever been sprayed. My ex got sprayed once, though. I also had a neighbor who lured one into her house because she felt sorry for it and thought it was cute. It was not "cute," it was possibly rabid because it was out in the middle of the day roaming the neighborhood. If it wasn't rabid it was so old it couldn't tell the difference between night and day anymore...it was huge and "hooded" (almost all white from the tip of its nose to the end of its tail with only some black underneath.) I see them all the time, they're everywhere here. The only thing I have against them is that they eat honeybees and teach their young how to get at the bees as well. On the other hand, they eat yellowjackets, which imo the world can do without.

No idea what will get rid of the scent for good besides time. Growing up on a farm, I never smelled them. There was plenty of space for them and the animals and us to coexist peacefully. My mother did have to chop the head off of a skunk once to submit to the conservation office for rabies testing. Farm life isn't pretty a lot of the time. But back to remedies...as long as humans populate densely in areas meant for wildlife, and keep domesticated pets and drive cars, we are all bound to run into each other with stinky consequences. If there was an easy remedy for skunk stank I guess we'd never learn to try to stay out of each other's way, and skunks would have been extinct long ago.

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

@Karl_K, omg I can see someone mistaking one of those mutant skunks for a cat and letting it in the house LOL!

@Daisys and Diamonds, skunk scent in a tube sounds absolutely dreadful

it sure is
but thankfully the possoms think so too