Brisco had his first (and hopefully last) encounter with a skunk on Tuesday. Travis and I met up at the Doudy Draw trailhead SW of Boulder to take the pups for an after-work hike. The weather was beautiful! About 70 degrees and sunny. There was a breeze, but it was warm. There was still snow on parts of the trail and some mud, but it was manageable. Since the dogs have their Boulder off-leash tags, they get to run circles around us while we're hiking. Brisco always finds a stick and Travis threw it up into the deep grasses. Brisco wasn't really watching and went flying up another hill looking for it. Travis and I continued down the trail and eventually Brisco caught up. He ran by and I smelled a slight wiff of skunk. He stopped ahead of us (without the stick) and started wiping his face with his paws and rolling around on the ground. I called him to me and he had one small goober on his forehead, but he wasn't dripping with spray. I could tell he had been sprayed though, so we sent him to the snow and he instantly started rolling around, wiping his face and he was even taking big bites of snow like he was trying to clean out his mouth. Poor guy probably wasn't that happy, but we found it very amusing and couldn't help but laugh. :) We looked back down the trail and saw a black fluffy tail sticking up out of the grasses where Brisco had been. We're guessing he was looking for his stick and accidentally disturbed the skunk. Probably surprised both of them!
We continued up the trail and had a nice hike. Instead of heading straight back to the car, we walked along the canal. Brisco went down to get some water and came back up COVERED in burrs!!! Oye... so now we had to stop on the side of the trail and try and get as many out as we could. We must have pulled 50-100 burrs out of his fur and there were still some we couldn't get out that we'd have to take care of at home. What a day Brisco was having! Luckily Mariah was being the good girl and avoided the skunk and barely got any burrs.
Since I had gone straight to the trailhead from work, we had 2 vehicles at the parking lot. We decided to keep Brisco in the Explorer since we had old blankets in there and the barrier to keep him in back. Mariah got to ride home with dad. It was a somewhat smelly ride home with the windows open the entire way. By the time I got home, Travis had already looked up a de-skunking recipe and had it all mixed up and ready to go (hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish soap). We wrapped Brisco in a blanket and immediately took him up to the bathtub! I scrubbed him down quite a bit and it really seems to have helped. I couldn't really wash his face all that well because I didn't want to get the mixture in his eyes, so his face still smells some. His breath is also pretty horrid, but the rest of him is way better. Now his fleece-lined collar that he was wearing... I ran that through the washer, but it really stinks still! I guess it'll stay in the garage for awhile. At least we have backup collars that will work. Last night I made a baking soda paste and tried brushing Brisco's teeth and tongue. He wasn't overly thrilled with it, but he's a good boy and holds still. I don't know if it helped or not, but he did sleep on the bed some last night (I had an old sheet on there) and I didn't wake up smelling skunk, so I think we'll be ok.
So - first skunk encounter finally happened and I think we got lucky that it wasn't worse than it was! Hopefully if he ever sees one again, he'll head the other way.
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