Tomato juice fiasco

We've had an axe murder...

Not really, but we did have a %$#@ tomato juice mess! Thursday evening, I needed to run to Wal-Mart. Sammie was outside so I called him into the house as I was walking out the door. When David (he had gotten off from work) and I returned about an hour later, Sammie, Roscoe, and Curly were all confined to the kitchen with the baby gate. The smell was horrible!! KJ said Sammie was stinking up the living room so he put everybody in the kitchen. After doing some sniffing of individual dogs, we determined that Sammie had been sprayed by a skunk. It wasn't as bad as Curly a few years ago so I don't think he took a direct hit. I had not noticed the smell as he passed me when I was leaving earlier. Of course, by this time, it was 8:30 at night so the feed stores were closed preventing me from buying that skunk odor bath stuff.

I put David to work finishing up supper, while I tackled the Sammie problem. I happened to have a large can of tomato juice (which I have since read doesn't really help). It was in the fridge so I microwaved it so it wouldn't be too cold. Judging from the way Sammie was shivering, I had not warmed it up enough. After saturating a good part of Sammie's fur with it, he somehow managed to flip the bowl into the air sending tomato juice EVERYWHERE. It was all over the shower walls, including the painted area waaaaay up by the ceiling. It was on the toilet, the floor, my shirt, my hair, and dripping down my forehead. I switched to rinsing, followed by regular dog shampoo. He has his head tucked under my arm here.

I rubbed a little lavender oil into his back fur where he couldn't lick it off to try and mask any lingering skunkiness. I wouldn't let him in our bed that night, but by morning he was mostly odorfree. His ears still smell skunky.