saturday! saturday! saturday skunks all right!

we've done it million times before. we've taken the dogs with us somewhere. tonight, it was for frozen yogurt. we get home and let the dogs run from the car, up the front porch, to the door. seriously, a million times.

this time, oskar was first. he ran, past the door (that's odd, i think) scuffled and ran around the other side of the porch, through the yard back up to us on the steps. then bugsy went. bugsy also ran past the door, into scuffle zone. that is when i saw a tail. a poofy raised black tail. some strange, unrecognizable noises were emerging from the far end of our porch and bugsy wasn't moving. oskar went back to investigate.

by this point i'm screaming. i'm certain the dogs have encountered another living creature (something i'm not entirely convinced they are equipped to do) and i'm not sure what it is. my first thought is skunk. but maybe cat, or raccoon, or opossum, or (oh god) some gremlin creature from the depths of the earth....this is where my demented mind takes me.

we are both screaming for bugsy to get away from 'it' and bugsy, eventually, comes plodding through the yard towards us...vomiting white foam.

fuck.

it doesn't take long, like, a millisecond, to realize he was skunked. we are frantically trying to calm the dogs, get the skunk away from the front door, find our keys to get in the house, find a place for the frozen yogurt we don't want to melt....what seems like forever was probably all of a minute before we get inside.

i take bugsy in the bathroom to start rinsing him off in the bath. at this point, under light, i see exactly where he was skunked. his face is yellow. yellow! as i'm trying to wipe him down, i can feel the slime that apparently is excreted along with scent. so gross. and it doesn't smell like skunk. you know, that familiar "oh i think a skunk was here" sort of lingering aroma that conjures images of Pepe Le Pew with a green odor trail behind him. no. this was like sticking your face in a gas tank and inhaling until you are dizzy.

so, i'm washing the little shit. only a week ago he ate a whole chicken. the poor thing is shivering and gagging. we make the concoction found all over the internet that includes peroxide, baking soda and soap. we do the rub down and rinse. pretty standard.

however, for anyone with smushy faced dogs, you know that wiping the face is no easy task. there are creases and proximity to the (bulging) eyes to consider. for this part, i used a q-tip. luckily (?) since the scent is colored, i could see it on the q-tip as i wiped it from the eye creases. i had to be very gentle, when wiping away between the eyes and around the ears with the wacky concoction, but i found that it sort of calmed him a bit. i wonder if it felt good, because up to that point he was acting pretty miserable.

so, the dogs will NOT be sleeping with us tonight. we'll evaluate their stink factor in the morning. hey! its like vacation but in our own big bed. maybe i can feel like i have a partner rather than a menagerie!

in the grand scheme, this one isn't that bad. in fact i knew it was just a matter of time, and frankly, i'm glad we were right there to take care of it rather than having come home hours later to a stinky, barfed up house.

i just hope bugsy never meets a raccoon.