A few nights ago, I heard our dogs really barking in our back yard. We live out in the country, but have a privacy fence enclosing our back yard. Sure enough, there was a skunk in the corner of the yard...and two of our three dogs were about 15 feet away from him (or her, I don't know which.) I yelled at the dogs, and thankfully they turned to come back...but the skunk let loose anyway. They didn't get a direct hit, but apparently some of the "mist" drifted onto them...they hightailed it into the house through the pet door before I could stop them...and of course they immediately started rubbing themselves on the carpet. OMG that smell! I can't even imagine what a direct hit would be like.

We spent the rest of the night bathing those two dogs in everything we could think of...BTW, the old tomato juice remedy doesn't do squat. When morning came and the pet store opened, I went and got some "Nature's Miracle" and that stuff truly is a miracle. It cut the smell down to just a very faint aroma on the first application, and on the second, the smell was gone completely. It took a couple of days for our house to air out completely, but it finally did.

I thought about trying to shoot the skunk...but I don't have a shotgun and I was afraid that if I hit it with either a 9mm or a .45, it would just let loose. Even though we do live out in the country, we do have a few neighbors, and I was a little concerned about possibly missing and having a stray round hit their homes.

So, we closed pet doors and by morning it was gone. I am going over every inch of the fence to make sure that there is no way in...low spots, open boards, etc. (Our fence encloses about 1 acre.) We've lived out here 8 years, and this is the first time we've had a direct encounter...although we have smelled them plenty of times along the highway.

I think I need to get a small bore shotgun, perhaps a .410, just in case.