Skunked!!

Mike and I went up to the cabin this weekend in order to cut and split wood in preparation for the coming winter.  We split exactly one piece of oak, but that doesn't matter, it is not the point of my story. 

Our little terrier, Sadie, who is not afraid of ANYTHING (except the vacuum cleaner) loves to chase the deer, turkeys, racoons and foxes.  She is so good at guarding the house that when we had a bear last year, she was the first to alert us to its presence.  She was barking up a storm and I looked out the window and she was about 5 feet away from a black bear eating the deer corn! 

Anyway, we thought nothing of it when she suddenly whined to go out on Friday night.  We let her out to chase what we thought was the racoon that has been getting to our bird feeders.  When Mike let her in about 10 minutes later it was a VERY smelly Sadie that came in!  She dived for her blanket on the couch and started rubbing her face all over it.  Mike and I took one whiff and knew...she had sniffed the wrong skunks butt!

In her defense, we do have two black and white cats at home, Mork and Mindy, that she pesters constantly.  So I would imagine she just thought this was another black and white kitty.  How wrong she was.  I had just happened to watch a special on skunks on the Discovery Channel a little while ago and they said the best thing to do if your pet gets skunked is to wash the animal in Dawn.  The skunk scent is actually an oily spray and Dawn will cut the oil and the smell faster than anything else.

I have heard people use everything from beer to tomato juice to baking soda and peroxide.  We used Dawn...over and over and over and over again.  At least until our eyes stopped watering and our noses stopped burning.  The bad thing is, from the first day we had Sadie she has slept in our bed with us.  Mike and I actually call her "Celibacy Dog" because she sleeps between us in bed.  So after her looooooooong bath, I rubbed some Burt's Bees honey lotion on her and she actually smelled better!  Or maybe we were just getting used to the smell.

She has had a bath or two since we returned from the cabin on Sunday...but I still don't nuzzle her neck.  Wow, that must have been one startled skunk!  Whew!!