Skunks and Dogs Do Not Mix(Gordon England) Skunks and Dogs Do Not Mix

Texas has dubious honors of having five types of skunks (polecats) and high numbers of them scattered across the state. In my youth, our family frequently traveled Texas highways. We often encountered dreadful skunk odors, which were especially strong around road kills.
There were two types of skunk aromas. The first was a bearable smell of an unprovoked skunk, like a human with body odor. This typical odor did not travel far, indicating this critter was relatively near if you caught a whiff of it. The second scent was the infamous odor like a combination of rotten tomatoes with burned rubber released in a directed spray from a skunk’s anal glands. Humans smelled this powerful potion up to three and a half miles from a spray location.
Most animals stayed far away from this natural self-defensive mechanism. However, Dad’s hunting dog, Bevo, mistook that unbearable odor as perfume. On our hunting trips, Bevo sometimes found the smell of a skunk and disappeared into the brush. When he took off barking, and we smelled the polecat, we gave up on seeing Bevo for several hours. Eventually, he returned, looking most content and blood free. I do not know if he killed his skunks or made love to them, but he plopped down in exhaustion, causing us to evacuate the area.
This created a substantial problem for us because Bevo traveled in a dog cage inside our station wagon, where he shared several hours of his terrible odor. Sending him to swim in a lake reduced his smell only slightly. During fall hunting season, we lowered the front and tailgate gate windows to keep most of his horrendous stench blowing out the back of the car. Winter hunting created a different story, with air too cold to lower the windows. Wrapping towels around our faces helped to some degree but being that close to Bevo and fresh anal spray made for very long rides home. Dad eventually solved this problem by acquiring a dog trailer towed behind his car. No more Bevo inside his vehicle.
After finishing college, I bought a house on the outskirts of San Antonio with empty fields behind my backyard wood fence. Soon after my daughter was born, I obtained my own springer spaniel hunting dog, Brewster.
One morning, Brewster uncharacteristically awoke us with fierce barking outside. I rubbed my eyes as I stumbled to our back sliding doors. Damn. My nose told me we had skunk trouble. An incredible sight of Brewster attacking a black, cat-sized creature with a white stripe in our back yard instantly woke me. I had never seen a live skunk so close. How did it get back there? With no gate on my rear property line, the animal must have dug under the fence looking for Brewster’s food bowl. Brewster kept dashing in to grab the invader, only to be stopped by a face full of spray. What a shocking sight. I yelled at my wife to stay inside with our baby. She rushed to me to see the problem, then went back into her bedroom and closed the door. It was going to be a bad morning.
I had no way to catch or trap the damned animal. I had to kill it. First, I covered every square inch of my body with clothes, a mask, and gloves. I had never been this close to a pissed-off skunk and its stench already brought tears to my eyes despite my being indoors. If I went outside to shoot it from ground level, I would be sprayed and stood a chance of accidentally hitting Brewster as he dashed in and out, attacking the awful polecat.
I backed away, allowing Brewster to corner it. This might work. I walked through a side fence and around the house. The appalling stench almost blinded me. I climbed onto the first rail to look over the wood fence. The polecat stood trapped next to the house. I stayed quiet, not wanting to become a target of spray. I held onto the fence with one hand. Slowly raising my rifle to my shoulder with the other hand, I switched off the safety and started to pull the trigger for a simple six-foot shot. Brewster, barking furiously, jumped in front of my rifle. Damn. I watched more spray stop him cold. Dogs have highly sensitive noses. Why would he keep attacking and receiving near poisonous spray? His nose must have been blinded, like when someone shined a flashlight in my face. The smell was horribly strong, causing me to gag.
When the skunk that smelled like something dead hurried to the other fence corner, I nailed him with a quick shot. Then I jumped off the fence and rushed to the front yard hose. Living up to common knowledge, the water did nothing to disperse the terrible smell. I gagged and rang my front doorbell. My wife opened the door, then stepped back in odiferous agony.
“Bring me some soap,” I pleaded.
She slammed the door. When it opened again, a bar of soap fell on the porch, and the door quickly closed.
I retrieved a shovel and a trash bag from the garage, then went to the backyard. I felt sorry for my miserable-looking dog, who stunk worse than anything I thought possible on this planet. I squinted my eyes and held my breath. My shovel went under the dead animal from hell. I dropped it into the trash bag and rapidly tied the bag shut before dropping it into my neighbor’s roadside trashcan. Spraying his trash can with Lysol had no effect on the odor whatsoever.
That was the easy part. Now to deal with Brewster. He usually stayed in our house, but it would be a while before he had that luxury. I returned to my backyard to make an initial soap and water cleansing of his thick fur, which made no changeto the stink factor on him and spread it to me. Next, I tried a folklore remedy by bathing him with tomato juice. Wow. Much better. After rinsing and another dose of tomato juice, Brewster became bearable. Now to clean me.
I took my clothes off in our backyard and poured the remaining tomato juice over my body. For some reason, my wife would not help. I don’t think she found my situation romantic. After scrubbing myself hard, I was surprised to be allowed back in the house. My clothes were a different story. I had no choice but to bag them up and throw them away. My wife did not want to buy a new machine if skunk oil coated the interior forever.

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