Skunked!
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Help!
We've had our basenji for 8 years and this is the first time Benji has been sprayed by a skunk.
He doesn't seem to reek too badly and has never had a bath. I hate to put all of us through that ordeal. He can get aggressive, unpredictable.
Do you think it will fade with his grooming?
Have any of you had this experience? What did you do?
Thanks for any help you can give us.
Mag & Mike
Concord NH -
I use Bac to Nature spray on my dogs when they roll in badger's poo. Luckily we don't have skunks but I can assure you that badgers poo smells foul. It sometimes takes a few sprays but does remove the smell. I'm not sure if it's available in the US but I presume so.
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Okay, thanks. I'll look for it.
Mag
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I was advised by some doggy friends that Tomato Ketchup removes the smell of Fox poo.
Apparently it sometimes requires 2 applications. -
Combine 1/4 cup of baking soda with 2 teaspoons of a dish washing product (such as Dawn) along with 2 pints of hydrogen peroxide to neutralize the odor.
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My Basenji/ACD mix got skunked last year; it was fairly mild fortunately! I think she was far enough away, and there was a strong wind that evening so I think she may have been upwind from the blast.
Anyway, I used the peroxide formula and it cut the odor by about 75%. I waited two days and bathed her again with it, which pretty much brought her back to being "generally suitable for household companionship" LOL. She still had a slight "funk" if I actually stuck my nose in her fur and sniffed, but it faded within about a month.
The odor will fade on it's own (may speed up a bit with grooming sprays, etc) but it will take quite a while…probably a month or more. If you want to speed up the process, he needs a bath. If it were my dog, I'd bite the bullet, get a cloth muzzle & a friend to help me hold the dog, and I'd bathe him with the peroxide solution. If you have help & you get your ingredients, towels, cups for rinsing, etc...set up beforehand (you have to mix the peroxide solution immediately before applying it to the dog) the bath only takes a few minutes. Rub it in & let it soak for a couple minutes, rinse, dry- and give the water-traumatized Basenji a treat afterwards LOL. Might be unpleasant for him but IMO it'd be worth a few minutes of "water torture" to not have to smell a skunk-reeking dog for the next month or two :)
This is Chloe during her de-skunking bath (she usually loves water/baths, but she managed to put on her most pathetic face for me this time)
And this is Chloe afterwards, drying herself on the carpet and getting some drying-off assistance from Jibini:
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My to b's got skunked last weekend. The peroxide recipe worked really good. The only problem is we're still tring to get it out of the doggy door.They ran right into the house after they where sprayed. We where not home at the time or son was. What a smell. Needless to say we look out before we let the dogs out.
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If you should decide to try a bath/shower - we discovered a way that both our B's like:
I sit on my hunches in the shower with a dog between my legs, holding her under her armpits of the front legs with a little weight on her hind legs. This relaxes her totally. Then my wife will use the hand shower to rinse (a bit warmer than hand warm), apply puppy shampoo, and rinse again. Then we dry her off.
If it's just a little bit of odor on a local area, we take a washing cloth with the shampoo, rinse and dry.
We have always allowed our dogs into the bathroom just for this reason - that they know the space and are comfortable there.
