Note: Read part 1 here.
Last week, my dog Molly invited me to try a chemistry experiment. That’s right, she stuck her nose in a skunk’s butt. You can guess what happened next.
“To fire, the skunk extrudes a pair of nozzles from its rear.” (Caution: this video is graphic. You cannot unsee it. Consider yourself warned.)
https://youtu.be/VZwlKANA43w?t=48s
This skunk pointed its nozzles at Molly’s face and fired, full blast. Molly, being a dog, was totally unfazed. Dogs apparently consider skunk an alluring perfume, judging by how many times I’ve caught my dogs rolling around on a very dead one at our neighbor’s place. After getting skunked in the face, Molly was mostly just sad and confused that I wouldn’t let her into the house.
While she pouted at the door, I consulted the internet. Some people swear by tomato juice, but when a veterinarian friend of mine recommended a mixture of baking soda, peroxide and soap, I was sold.
When you’re attempting to de-skunk a dog, it’s important to know that a skunk’s stink is broadcast in oil. Which means that if you try to wash it off with water, you’ll just end up spreading it around. My friend’s advice was to dab the de-skunk mixture onto the dog’s fur, carefully avoiding the eyes, and then leave it there without rinsing.
That’s exactly what I did, and it actually worked. How? Through the magic of chemistry! What makes the skunk’s spray so stinky is the thiols it contains, and the magical baking soda, peroxide, and soap mixture oxidizes the thiols to sulfuric acids.
The reason people think tomato juice works is that skunk has such a strong odor, that after a while, the human nose gets so fatigued that it quits smelling it and smells the tomato juice instead, says William F. Wood, a chemist at Humboldt State University. “Another person coming on the scene at this point will readily confirm that the skunk spray has not been neutralized.”
Here’s the recipe for de-skunking a dog:
Mix the following ingredients in a bucket and gently dab it into the dog’s fur. Leave it on for at least ten minutes, and if you rinse it off, avoid scrubbing in a way that will spread the mixture around. (Note: the hydrogen peroxide may bleach your dog’s hair.)
1 quart of 3% hydrogen peroxide
1/4 cup of baking soda
1 teaspoon liquid soap
Dear reader, I hope you’ll never need to use this recipe. Me, I’m keeping it handy. Because dogs just don’t learn their lesson.
Skunk butt photo by Marilylle Soveran via Flickr.
Somehow you’d think a dog would learn from its first encounter with a skunk. Alas Dusty was a serial skunk catcher. She knew how to sit, lie down and come when called. She never did get a handle on don’t grab that creature. There are several commercial products that do a good job on both the dog and the couch and the drapes and….
I am not expecting the need to use your recipe, but I’ll hang on to it just in case.
This gave me a nice memory – of my father explaining the exact same chemistry to my mother in a pillow conversation about our skunked dog. My mother, being interested in perfumery, was wondering if we could elute the dog in oil to remove the active ingredient.
I only got to listen for a little while before I was rousted up and sent to douse the dog in peroxide.