One of those general truths, or old wives' tales, that's out there in the American cultural ether is about skunks: if your dog gets sprayed by a skunk the best remedy, the only remedy, is tomato juice. Useful or not, this information had been dormant in our collective family mind for years. Dormant until after dinner last week when we walked into the back room off the kitchen and were immediately sure we'd accidentally caused some electrical disaster. What else could explain such a full, peculiar stink that filled the room? Ah, not electrical or mechanical, but skunk. Skunk and dog. The dog looked up from where she'd been lying asleep on the floor, eyes expectant, tail brushing the rug as if to say, “Yes?” Oh, yes indeed, what a noseful. Although the dog had been with us for eight years, this was her first real full-fledged skunk engagement. It was too late at night to do anything about it so we said “Good night”, closed the door and let her be.
Come morning and plenty of mild air and sunshine, we put the skunk-shot dog outdoors and the back room out of our mind until after dinner. And then we really had to do something. We drove into town to the all-night supermarket to buy tomato juice. Big tomato juice can sales must still be strong. Unlike almost every other canned juice, tomato still comes in large, two-quart cans as well as a dinky bar-shot size, which tells you something about the validity of our American skunk lore. How many big cans does it take to do a dog? Oh, three should be enough to do a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, one for each third of the dog.
We took down three and put them in the basket and then, still wondering how we were going to do the juice thing, cruised a couple of more aisles to pick up a few items we should have gotten earlier that day. We noticed a guy in front of the ice cream locker reading varieties. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, we figured, so we asked him, totally out of the blue, if he'd ever washed a dog in tomato juice because of a run-in with a skunk. “Hey, all the time, last summer,” he said. He'd lived by some canal down south that attracted skunks to its banks which in turn attracted his long-haired Australian shepherd, which meant he'd bought tomato juice by the case and could still see it, in his mind's eye, stacked by thirty-two's in his garage.
There must be something in the experience that still surrounds the guy like an aura, because out of all 25 or 30 people in the market at that hour, he was the one we chose to ask. “Thing is,” he said, “you've got to let it soak in, for at least 20 or 30 minutes for it to do any good. What kind of dog you got, long or short-haired? Chessy, hunh? Probably two cans'll do. But get three and you can always have a glass of juice in the morning if you have any extra. My dog, she always took four, being long-haired and all. And, watch out when they shake.”
Shake? We could just see the M*A*S*H effect of red juice splattered everywhere on the white tiles of the master bathroom. When we got home we caught the dog and put her in the stall shower of the kids' bathroom with the cans and then went and got an opener. We poured two cans of juice on her, rubbing it in, feeling really glad to be alive. Well, not exactly. It's hard distributing juice evenly throughout a large dog's wiry coat while you sit half in and half out of a glass-doored shower stall, late at night, trying not to think dark thoughts while getting doused with tomato juice. The dog's back and shoulders were easy to do but her tail and legs were impossible. How were we sure we were even getting the places where the skunk had got the dog? And then how to wait out that soak of half an hour? What do you do if an 85 pound, soaking wet, Virgin Bloody Mary dog bolts?
Wait a minute. This is the dog that drank the kids' apple juice when they were babies. Sure enough, she liked tomato juice. She began licking up the juice on the floor of the shower. She walked around and around the shower slowly and deliberately licking up the juice as it dripped steadily off her body. Ten minutes of full-dog engagement. No bolt, no whine, no agitation. Easy. After the shower floor and walls were clean as far up as her standing-dog height, she calmly stood. Ten more minutes to go. With the shower door open a crack we read aloud to her from one of the books on the shelf in the bathroom. She listened with her snout just poking out until it was time for a warm water rinse. She didn't mind at all, being a water dog. It's the cold water from an outside hose she hates.
Now she only faintly smelled of skunk and that deep vegetable smell tomato and V-8 juice have. Trying the portable hair dryer on her after a good toweling off, however, was a mistake. The hot air drove the dog to distraction, especially when it breezed around her ears. So we had to settle for the silver medal: clean and damp, not the gold: clean and dry; but, sweeter-smelling, nonetheless. We both spent a quiet, uneventful night in our respective lairs. It had taken two cans. The third is out in the pantry, ready in reserve.
You know, we won't mind a bit if we're reading ice cream flavors late in the supermarket
some evening and a nice, slightly agitated lady comes up, attracted by our aura, to ask if the old wives' tale about skunks and tomato juice is true. We, too, can give her an authoritative “Yes.” And, who knows, she might even luck out and have a juice-loving dog. But we will caution her that the time to rinse down the bathroom is right after you get the dog done. Letting tomato juice set until morning isn't a good idea, unless you like scrubbing off vegetable fibre that's bonded dog-high everywhere in a confined space. We had learned first-hand we didn't.
DH Stockton, 10 Mar 97
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