This is not the post I planned to write today—I planned to write about making strawberry fruit spread at the Prince Edward Cannery, and I will but first, how to de-skunk a dog…
Tuesday is yoga night so Bruce and I were pretty relaxed when we made the mistake of thinking we could add Internet service to the farm’s new IPad quickly & maybe watch an epi
sode of Chopped. An hour into my phone conversation with tech support, Snickers and Doodle, our wonderful but precocious Australian Shepherds appeared on the deck after cruising the farm. It took Bruce only one whiff to know who they’d been hanging out with. We ignored them and continued with our futile tech support call knowing it was going to be a long night. Finally, after almost 2 hours we got to the fun task of de-skunking our favorite canines.
If you’re wondering, tomato juice does not work! But, we do have a recipe that works. We found it on-line years ago so I no longer have the link but I keep it on my phone as a Note – you never know when you’ll need it
De-Skunking Recipe
1 qt. 3% hydrogen peroxide
¼ c baking soda
1 tsp dish soap
- Mix all the ingredients together in a bucket. We use one recipe per dog
- Wet the lucky pooch
- Wear rubber gloves and use a sponge to apply the solution (we pour any extra over the dogs as a top dressing)
- Rinse, sniff, and repeat
We live in a small cottage so washing stinky dogs in the house is not an option. Fortunately, our horse barn has a wash rack with warmish water. It was 350 F outside so we prepared the first batch, bundled up, and with dogs mistakenly excited about our late night walk headed for the barn.
We woke the horses, mini-mule, and chickens but the barn cats, Jewel, Larry, Darryl, and Darryl, were happy to see us. We sealed all the exits—there would be no escaping! I held and Bruce de-skunked Snickers first. She was definitely more stoic about it—and stinkier! Doodle was sure it was the end of the world as she knows it, but Doodle is a professional worrier. The cats gathered around and supervised.
Around midnight, our overalls were in the laundry, Snickers and Doodle were happily tucked in their crates and we capped the evening with yesterday’s Daily Show.
Today we bought 6 more quarts of hydrogen peroxide—skunk season has just begun!