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.