Skunk adventures

Thursday night about when we were going to bed, Socks got riled up about something in the backyard and went out to bark at it. Nothing unusual about this, though the barking had a different tone than usual. Turns out she'd not only found a skunk, but it was inside her penned-in area, and she had it cornered under the tiny bit of deck that serves as the stoop, and Siobhan didn't quite arrive in time to save her from getting sprayed.

Fortunately she got a very light hit. Even minutes afterwards it was entirely possible to stand right next to her. I've experienced full-blast skunk sprayings on dogs before and even with my notoriously weak sense of smell I couldn't stand next to them without feeling like I was going to lose my lunch. Socks was flipping out and rubbing her nose on the grass, and occasionally trying to menace the skunk again, but I was able to get her and lead her in without getting sprayed. The skunk later found its way out of the yard and down to the neighbor's shed.

We had a pretty late night trying to bathe the dog and mop the floor, and find enough ways to get rid of the smell to get through the night. Again, all this was only possible because we had a very mild hit to deal with. Siobhan has never experienced this before (and while I think she believes me that this was a mild hit, I don't think she quite gets just how mild) so we had some of those miscommunications that'd be comical if you saw them on a TV show. Thinking back on it, I think some of them come from the fact that she was reading advice that assumed you'd had a full-fledged spraying, and which, if followed, would get us down to probably about the level of stink that we already were at. Thus she had a sense of urgency that I lacked because we were already at the kind of "tolerable" level that's probably the best you can achieve, other than by waiting it out. It was a very frustrating and exhausting night. (Great preparation for having a long drive to a concert tonight, and then back from it afterwards).

Socks stopped being upset about it after her bath last night, once the smell wasn't hurting her nose anymore. About the only distress she had was that we weren't letting her up on the bed so much and not petting her as we would usually, since we didn't want to have to wash our hands after. Since then she's been pretty back to normal.

The house still has a smell about it, but for me, it's mild enough that I can stop noticing it until I go out and come back in. Roomba and Scooba are working on the floor, and we have the fans going (enough to make it chilly in here). Of course the smell is still strong enough to bother Siobhan. There's probably nothing for that but to wait it out.