Skunk Remediation

[Tom Horne]

Bath the dog in store brand tomato juice. It really does work.

[SteveB]

Morphing to get in the last word is just a boor. But then, you wrote the book.

Steve

[ChrisJ]

As someone with a determined-to-get-even & not overly bright collie, I've had to do this several times. A few additions to your recipe:

1 - The neutralizing solution is most effective if you use a fresh, unopened bottle of hydrogen peroxide. 2 - As dogs often get sprayed directly in the face, it's advisable to put a drop of mineral oil in their eyes to protect them from the neutralizing solution. 3 - Do not wet the dog beforehand, just sponge the solution onto the fur and let it sit for 5 minutes, then rinse it off.

This neutralizing solution is very effective on the dog's skin & coat, however, it cannot remove the skunk oil in a dog's mucus membranes (nose, mouth) and thus it will be a couple of weeks before the dog stops having "skunk breath."

Chris

[ChrisJ]

Before we learned about the hydrogen-peroxide/baking soda/shampoo concoction, we tried the tomato juice trick on our late great collie, Zeffie. A word from the wise - do not use "country-style" tomato juice. Country style juice is thicker & contains pulp which we learned gets caught up tight in collie fur. Even though we rinsed her well, for weeks afterwards I was pulling tomato pulp bits out of her coat. As well the tomato juice stained her white ruff fur pink. So while it did work in that she smelled better, I found some definite downsides to tomato juice.

Chris