Skunked Ginger
Ginger was our rescue Lab and Golden Retriever mix. Sweetest dog you’d ever want to meet, but boundless energy that running her 3 miles a day would not even come close to expending.
We had a dog whisperer come to the house once, because bringing Ginger home seemed to be causing issues with Sandy, our Golden Retriever, also the sweetest dog you’d ever want to meet. The dog whisperer asked how much exercise they were getting and when I said I ran with them 3 miles a day every day he pointed to Ginger and said, “She needs at least double that. “
We had a split rail fence that stood about 4 feet high. Ginger would leap over it easy peasy and run wild through the neighborhood. Ginger, like the velociraptors from Jurassic Park, figured out how to open the door from the house to the backyard. I came home from work once, backdoor wide open, and three or four messages on our voicemail from various neighbors that went something like this:
“Hi! This is Sam, your neighbor around the block. We found Ginger running through the neighborhood and managed to get a hold of her. We have her here at the house.”
Next message: “Hi, it's your neighbor Sam, again. We had to go out, so we dropped Ginger off next door. “
Next message: “Hi! We are Sam’s neighbors and had Ginger. Sam dropped her off to us and we put her in our fenced in backyard. But she escaped! We don’t know where she is. We called the police.”
I started roaming the neighborhood looking for Ginger. I came across the cop also looking for Ginger. We eventually saw a ginger colored blur running through some wooded/brush area and between the two of us were able to eventually corral her into my car.
After that incident we knew we had to put in an electric fence. But, that didn’t stop her either. She ran right through it and over the split rail fence. In desperation I called my vet. He said, turn it all the way up and if that doesn’t work, put two collars on her.
My options weren’t really appealing here. Dog gets run over by a car or dog gets electrocuted. Trusting the vet, we turned the electric current to full blast. It worked.
But it didn’t matter if Ginger couldn’t go looking for trouble. Trouble still would find her.
As per the usual evening routine, I let Ginger out into the yard around 9 pm so she could do her business before bed. Some minutes later, per usual, Ginger barks to be let in. I opened the door and immediately was felled by the horrific odor. SKUNK!!!! She had come in the house, so I had to grab her and bring her back outside. Meanwhile, I was yelling to Ernie, “Help, help, Ginger’s been skunked!!”
This was not something we had ever experienced before and our sole frame of reference on what to do dated back to an episode of the Brady Bunch where they used tomato juice to wash their skunked dog.
Fortunately, we had the internet at that point and I was able to google it. Found where it said not to use tomato juice, but to use feminine douche product. This was just to get us through the night where in the morning we would take her to the groomer for them to skunk wash her.
Ernie looked at me and said, “I am not buying feminine douche product. You buy it and I will wash the dog.” “I’ll take that deal,” I thought.
Ginger was a biggish dog and I wasn’t sure how much feminine douche product I was going to need. I grabbed like 6 bottles. I approached the check out lane and the 17 year old cashier boy (pre days of self-check outs). I plopped them on the conveyor belt. He looked at me for a beat too long and then started to ring them up. Mortified I thought, “Oh my gosh he thinks these are for me!!” I immediately blurted out, “Oh these aren’t for me! These are for my dog who has just been skunked.” Not sure he believed me or not. Noted to self, do not shop in this supermarket for awhile.
Back home and Ernie douche washed Ginger. Fortunately , it was a warm-ish late March night so he could do it outside. In she came after her wash. We sniffed. OMG. Now she smelled like douched skunk. We weren’t all that much better off than we were 6 bottles of douche ago. Nothing to do at this point except put her in her crate, close the door to the room to contain the smell and get her to the groomer first thing in the morning.
The groomer managed to deskunkify Ginger thankfully. They did tell us that it would take about 6 months before all odor would be gone as the stink gets into the skin on their noses and other places that washing can’t eliminate. So for the next 6 months, and especially if it was rainy out, we’d get faint whiffs of skunk emanating off of Ginger.
A douche-less skunk smell though, so that was a plus. The minus? Having had to go 10 minutes out of my way to do my grocery shopping for the next couple of months.