Kendallville skunking update

Summer and I sat down on the porch sofa when I returned from taking her mother to work and somehow one of us leaned right and the other left and we have been snoozing. It is a long sofa, but not that long, so old legs and young legs entangled and in moments of partial rousing, vied for space.

My head hurts so I am up, having sought out fast-acting aspirin,  regular Coke mixed with Diet C,  plus a wee bit of tylenol. In other words: The Cure Plus. Although I think at the moment I could do with a smidgen of Miss Mamie’s and Miss Emily’s father’s Recipe.

In the kitchen, I caught a stronger whiff of skunk and zeroed in on Sydney’s collar; I had not stressed during the bathing to take it OUTSIDE. I have sniffed some porch things and they are iffy, including Courage Bear, on whom Sydney buried his head on coming in after the event. My mother and aunt told the story that once when their mother had some old carriage robes that had been skunked, she consulted her Uncle Ed Olney, an old-timer and son of homesteaders about what to do. He said, “Burn them.”

UPDATE UPDATE: We just sniffed Spikey and, well, she’s sitting in the sun now as well.

Talk about crazy . . .

It was at 4 am this morning that I had Sydney in the bathtub with ketchup and Dawn dishwashing detergent. We didn’t have any tomato paste in the house, nor stewed tomatoes . . . so it was ketchup . . . ketchup and the Dawn to combat the smell of skunk. I don’t think it has worked. I don’t know if time heals all wounds, but I am hoping it will eventually help with this summer’s skunking.

Sydney was startled around 11 last night and ran outside. Then, with a tremendous whiff of skunk, he came back in. The air around the door was a moving wall of skunk smell and I so hoped that Sydney had run the remnanst of an emission. Most everyone in the house agreed by, oh, 3 am that it had been the target.  So that is why I am now sitting here with a numbed nose and a wet dog.

I have done this before – with Little Ann. She got it right on the snout at Mother’s. That was at 2 am. I think she had about six baths. I didn’t know the tidbit about the Dawn detergent then and, indeed, although I wrote an article about the skunking of  Little Ann and included info from vets and kennels, I’m not at all certain that knowing it now is a help. That is, to say, I’m not so sure it really, really works. Maybe it is a psychological tactic to get people through these times. Oh, yeah, the dog doesn’t stink; I used Dawn.

But then, maybe there was a note about the Dawn being the original formula; could my having the blue color make a difference?

It is lonely at this hour in the morning, with dawn still not come and Dawn not working.

Oh, there is a bit more: Sydney ran in and jumped on a pile of Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse late-nighters – you know, the ones with the red hair and pillowly little bodies. Yes, those guys. Grover, you were lucky to have been in Ohio.