1. My patience for a skunky dog is far greater when he’s outside.
2. My husband has filmmaker instincts, not keep-the-skunky-dog-out-of-the-house ones.
3. My go-to curse at top volume is not for the faint of heart.
4. Apparently, animal control in Los Angeles only picks up dead wild animals.
5. I can stand up from a crouch with a live skunk in my hands.
6. My sympathy has a limit.
First, an intro to our dog Boris, a blue heeler / German shepherd mix rescue dog which we adopted right before COVID shut everyone’s social life down for a year. He’s a ranch dog on a suburban lot, with all the protective instincts and pain tolerance of his breed, with perhaps a smidge less common sense, given the volume of wildlife that makes its way through our backyard.
Saturday evening a sudden commotion outside was the only warning I had before Boris came tearing into the living room to rub his face on the cushions in the “Get it off! Get it off!” way that is to be expected after close encounters with skunk juice. “NO!!!” I yelled, racing out to the side yard and calling him to come, which he did, because he’s a good dog, before turning right back around and racing inside. It was then that I realized the skunk was right outside the kitchen door. My husband stepped out to see how he could help because he’s a good man. I gestured wildly, said something unintelligible about the skunk behind him, shut the water off, and left the yard by the front gate while Ed escaped back into the house.
The next twenty minutes were spent outside the front door with a hose, Dawn dish soap, and a dog trying every way he knew how to escape the inevitable face washing. The Ring doorbell caught me in action, and while I’m not proud of my emphatic invective when I realized my husband had left the door open behind him, that’s the part of the video he vows to keep forever.