WHAT’S THAT SMELL???

Oreo Gets Skunked

Three important lessons learned

Photo of Oreo by author

Encountering a pair of skunks on my early morning constitutional reminded me of an incident involving our late lamented Portuguese Water Dog.

So long as he got his two walks and two-and-a-half meals a day, Oreo generally didn’t cause much trouble. Sure, there was the occasional roll in dead animal matter necessitating one or more baths. And there was the ongoing expense of regular and unexpected vet bills.

But, as I said, Oreo didn’t get into too much trouble. Until, that is, an encounter with a nocturnal varmint that proved to be more than his match.

I should mention that Oreo was not a cat lover. We never introduced him to cats when he was a puppy and thus he retained his instinctive distaste for felines.

Given the chance, he wanted to catch one of those creatures and tear it to shreds. Little did he know, however, that he would likely have been the loser in any such matchup.

I should also mention that Oreo had never been accused of being overly bright. He wasn’t a stupid dog, mind you, but he wasn’t the wisest whippet on the block which might help explain Oreo’s misadventure.

One night some years ago, Oreo stood at our back door wanting to get out. Since this was a frequent request, I thought nothing of it although I did notice that he seemed more eager than usual to get to the backyard. Given that I, too, as a then sixty-year-old often had urgent bathroom visits, I figured Oreo’s eagerness was just a function of his age.

It turns out that peeing was the last thing on his mind. When I opened the back door, Oreo took off like a shot barking as if he were a dog on a mission. Opening that door was our first mistake.

Since it was dark out, I couldn’t see what he was up to. I figured maybe he had spotted a squirrel and was futilely giving chase.

But it turns out that Oreo had spotted something bigger than a squirrel. Something, that to his limited vision, probably looked like a cat. Except this cat had a white stripe down its back.

Before I could return to the living room and the book I was quietly reading, I heard my wife Cheryl proclaim from the upstairs bedroom: “What is that horrible smell?”

Oreo’s attack on what he thought was a cat turned out to be a kamikaze mission doomed to failure. This was no cat; this was a skunk. And as skunks will do, this one reared and fired.

Oreo came staggering back to the door and Cheryl let him in. That was our second mistake. The poor dog looked like he’d been sucker punched and, to make matters worse, he was foaming at the mouth. He wandered about the main floor of the house dripping skunk oil and finally plunked himself down on the living room carpet where he deposited even more of the foam.

Cheryl feared the worst, called the emergency animal hospital and, notwithstanding their warning that there was a minimum charge of $145, said she’d bring him right over. She then loaded him in the back of our car. That was our third mistake.

Luckily for us, the technician at the animal hospital immediately recognized, by smell alone no doubt, that Oreo had been the victim of a wanton skunk attack. Thus, the $145 fee was waived and Cheryl was sent home with a hydrogen peroxide-baking soda-dishwashing detergent recipe to apply to our dog’s body as many times as needed.

The recipe worked, at least for Oreo. As for the carpet, the sofa, and our clothes, not so much. For days after, that distinctive skunk odor lingered throughout the house as a not-so-subtle reminder of our mistakes.

Weeks passed and it seemed like the worst was over. Oreo smelled like a rose and we only got the occasional whiff of our absent Pepé Le Pew.

But our third mistake lived on to haunt us. Cheryl’s car had yet to fully recover from Oreo’s skunk-scented ride to the animal hospital.

We tried fabric deodorizer, skunk smell remover, soap and water, and even incense. But try as we might, the odor lingered. After weeks of driving the car with all the windows down, the scent finally disappeared but the lessons learned remained forever.

[embed]The Dialectic of Garage Sales Karl Marx was right about capitalismmedium.com

[embed]Get an email whenever David Martin publishes. Get an email whenever David Martin publishes. Subscribe so you don't miss a post. By signing up, you will create a…daretobeaverage.medium.com