Bonnie: May 1992 – February 2007

I read a column in the Detroit paper the other day, describing a dog’s skunk adventure at 3 in the morning. It made me laugh out loud and recall my first skunk experience during the early years of living rurally. This story’s heroine is not current dog Katie, but the previous sheltie Bonnie. Well, heroine might be too strong. Lets just call her the lead drama queen. Though I had a pretty important supporting role. As it turned out.

I worked back then in the very stressful demanding mortgage industry, lots of hours, lots of late nights. Poor Bonnie waited patiently for me every night, but was always ready to run out and do her thing as soon as I got home. This particular night I let her out the front door, and followed her out as I did every night. She ran over the berm by the garage to go to her favorite wetting spot. Not unusual. What was unusual is that she ran back almost immediately, shaking her head and coughing. I didn’t figure it out immediately, but the smell followed her. Of course I panicked, and we both ran into the house. Bad idea. She immediately began to rub her face on all the furniture, with me running after her yelling to stop! Now! Really! Stop! The smell was..well…horrendous is a kind word for it.

I eventually got her shepherded down to her kennel in the basement. Not finding any dog shampoo I headed back out, still in business suit and heels to a neighborhood convenience store, looking for tomato juice. I walked the isles twice before approaching the register in the front. I asked if they had any tomato juice, the attendant said, no…then paused as my smell arrived…and apologized profusely that they didn’t, and offered her condolences. I headed further into town to the larger grocery store. It was going on 11:00 p.m. My feet hurt. So did my head.

At the grocery store I quickly grabbed a couple of cans of tomato juice and a big bottle of dog shampoo. I headed to the express lane (this was before there were such things as self checking) and waited in a long line. The people in front of me glanced at me, wrinkled their noses and moved almost imperceptibly forward, away from me. When it was finally my turn and I put the cans of tomato juice and bottle of dog shampoo on the conveyor belt the cashier asked how my day had been. I replied that I was buying tomato juice and dog shampoo. She finally got a whiff of me and said she was sorry. But as I was picking up my bag of goodies she still sang out that I should “have a nice evening!” Yeah. Right.

Back at the house I loaded the dog into the laundry tub and poured tomato juice all over her. Then I shampooed her with the dog shampoo. And then I rinsed and repeated. I can tell you with authority that tomato juice merely makes your skunky dog an orange skunky dog. She smelled still, ode of skunk with a faint tomato base. Yummy. It was late and I had to be at work early, so I gave up on the dog, confined her to her kennel and went to take a shower. I showered until there was no more hot water. In the morning I showered again until the hot water ran out.

I dragged myself into work, exhausted but determined to get a lot of work done. I sat quietly in my cubicle while the rest of the staff came in. My neighbor in the adjoining cube sat down, turned her computer on and called over the wall, “Hey Dawn! Did you smell skunk when you walked in here this morning?” DRATS! I didn’t let on that I did, and hoped I could finish out the day, but by afternoon she was having headaches and could still smell skunk, so I went into my boss and told him the (short version) story and went home. Walking in the door I realized the house reeked of skunk. I took the dog to the groomer for a skunk bath. But it took almost a month before the smell was gone from the house.

Poor Bonnie, she got skunked two more times in her life. I learned not to let her inside, and not to waste my time with tomato juice; just schedule the groomer’s skunk bath. I’m pretty sure that if Katie ever gets to run free she’ll be skunked too. I’ve got the groomer phone number on speed dial.

Katie: born December 2006

Still skunk free…knock on wood.