Fresh As a Daisy

It's 4:30 AM here and why am I still awake you might ask?  Well you see our dear, sweet Mr. Quinn went out at about 11:30 tonight like he always does in preparation of heading to bed.  We take all of the pups out for one last potty run before hitting the hay each night.  Sounds exciting right?!  It normally isn't, but tonight, well that was a whole other story!!!

You see Mr. Tide was the one who actually took them out tonight, and after he had brought back in Miss Kylee and Misty Belle, he came to the back door and asked if I would put the other dogs up and then come out to help him.  This is never a good sign my friends! 

I didn't really need an explanation as to what had happened, the odor reached me before Mr. Tide's words actually did.  Yup, Mr. Quinn had a rather nasty argument with a skunk it seems, and we all know who wins arguments with skunks...

There is a fairly effective remedy for removing the smell of skunk from a dog.  It involves hydrogen peroxide, Dawn dish detergent, and baking soda...we had baking soda but that was the only ingredient we had on hand.  So my son and I jumped in the car and drove the 25 minutes to the nearest store that was still open...I'll never bad-mouth Walmart again, ok I might, but not for awhile a least!  When we got home Mr. Tide had brought the stinky one into the house and the whole place smelled horrible!

The scent of skunk up close and personal is far different from the scent you smell along the roadway when one has been hit, it is something similar, but 100 times worse!  Poor Quinnie took a direct hit in the face from what we've been able to piece together, and he was drooling and foaming at the mouth trying to get rid of the foul taste...poor guy!

I made a phone call to the emergency vet and they told me to monitor his gums and make sure they stay nice and pink and are reactive to the touch.  Apparently when a dog gets a good dose of skunk spray into their body it can actually cause toxic shock and it can be quite dangerous.  So after cleaning our poor boy up with a good bath in the magic solution, I decided to stay up the rest of the night checking to make sure he's ok.  We'll do a follow up with our regular vet first thing tomorrow morning, but for tonight I'm erring on the side of caution and checking him frequently!  

I don't have any photos of daisies at the moment so although he's not smelling fresh as a daisy, he is smelling at least as good as a ranunculus!!!