Pets can make us, cry, sigh, smile and laugh

Our senior dog goes to the shop with Rick most days. She used to wander through the fields and the salvage yard on the way, but as she has aged she mostly just walks with him down and back home again. She usually only does it once a day. 

 One day last week she went with him and when he got back home, she wasn’t with him, he came in and said, “I don’t know where the dog is, she disappeared shortly after I left the shop and I haven’t seen her since.”

When she was younger, we would have been out making sure she wasn’t going off the place and wandering where she didn’t belong, at 12 years old though she doesn’t wander too far. She actually showed up just a few minutes later, she had been in the ditch and was all wet, so we figured she had just been finding a ditch with water in it.

I noticed a stench when we were eating lunch and jokingly accused Rick of wearing a dirty shirt that was stinky. After lunch, though, and after Scotchy had dried off a little, I realized that it wasn’t Rick at all. Scotchy had found a dead raccoon that we had trapped here by the chicken house and killed. Rick had taken the carcass down to the burn pit and tossed it in there. Something had drug it up on a roadway next to the pit, she found it and made a stinky mess of herself. It was from the top of her head almost to her tail, all the way down her right side clear to her flank and clear down her right front leg. It was greasy, sticky, smelly and just plain disgusting.

I looked at our bathtub and then at our 86-pound dog and decided I was just not up for that battle. So cried HELP to my neighbor, she has the hose set up for warm water outside to bathe her own dogs. She agreed to help the next day to give Scotchy a bath and get her welcome in the house again.

It took two washings, once with Dawn dish soap and the second with the shampoo she always uses on her dogs. It is called Cowboy Magic and does a wonderful job. I went over there with a nasty, stinky dog and came home with a wonderful, shiny, nice smelling clean dog.

And what did she do the next morning? It wasn’t the raccoon again thankfully, but she bailed into the irrigation ditch and got all muddy. At least ditch water doesn’t stink like dead raccoon. I have run this recipe again, but it is always nice to know where to get it.

DIY skunk remover

8 ounces Hydrogen peroxide

½ cup baking soda

2 tablespoons Dawn dish soap

Just keep the ingredients on hand until you need them, then mix together and put on a dry dog, do not wet the dog with water first. Water drives the scent into the hair shaft. Pour the mixture on the area when the dog was sprayed first and then over the rest of the dog. Leave on for 10 minutes and then rinse well and shampoo with regular dog shampoo.