Fo’ Shizzle

I gave muttley another bath tonight, with a stronger de-skunking solution.  This time I focused on his head and neck.  Seemed to do the trick — D’s super-sniffer detected the faintest whiff of skunk up close.  Much better than the previous situation, which was me still feeling somewhat nauseous when in the same room as sir stinks-a-lot.

I made a 1/4 solution, but undiluted.  So 8oz of hydrogen peroxide, 3tsp of baking soda, and 1/4tsp of dish soap.  Used a sponge I bought with the peroxide to really scrub his head, going against the grain of his fur.  I was surprised at how patient he was, given that it must have stung a bit and smelled awful.

Anyhow, all that smells well ends well.  Or something.

The dog went and got himself skunked last night. No, not drunk as a skunk, SPRAYED by a skunk. He was out on a walk with D, the neighbor, and the neighbor’s dogs. I think the other dogs egged him on, because he’s the only one who got the full brunt of the spray.

Having never dealt with a skunky dog before, I started to dig out cans of tomato sauce. I decided to check the Intarwebs and found out that tomato juice for de-skunking is a myth. It masks the smell, at best. The real deal is to mix 1 qt of hydrogen peroxide with 1/4 cup of baking soda and 1 tsp of dish detergent. The peroxide and baking soda react to form lots of oxygen, which breaks down the thiol compounds in skunk spray. This allows the detergent to do its job and remove the gunk.

I got him pretty clean, but his head still stinks a day later. I think I’ll have to bathe him again, but it’s hard to really scrub his head without getting the nasty concoction into his eyes/nose.

Sigh.

Yesterday we went to play on the Spurwink river. There is a bridge on 77, precisely on the Cape/Scarborough border, and it affords easy access to the river.

We went with our neighbors, so the group consisted of 4 adults, 3 girls under 6, and 3 dogs. Add in 4 snow tubes/toboggans and a fishing rod, and it’s a recipe for chaos. Fortunately we managed not to hook anyone (didn’t hook any stripers, either), although Shaggy did his best to grab the lure the first time I cast it. Stupid dog.

The Spurwink winds through a large salt marsh, and at low tide it’s possible to walk/wade quite a ways back to a series of exposed sand bars. I hauled the inflatable convoy with its on-again-off-again passengers most of the way back, until we found a nice big sand bar that looked like it would stay dry for a while. Then we left the tubes and walked back another quarter-mile or so.

I wish I’d taken pictures, but I figured that salt water and digital cameras wouldn’t play well together. Maybe next time I’ll take it in a ziploc or something. We all had a lot of fun, until the sun started going down and the little people started getting cold.

After a hurried slog back to the bridge, we piled into the vehicles and drove home for a takeout dinner.

Oh, the title. Yeah… So mr. i’m-a-puppy-and-stupid decided to drink the water. I tried stopping him a few times, but my neighbors (who have much larger and older dogs) said that he’d just puke it up and learn his lesson. Fortunately, he managed to keep it together until we got home, but I’ve never seen a chocolate lab look so green.