Had a run-in with a skunk?

By Jean Sabatelli, AnimalForum.com staff
Copyright 1999, Jean Sabatelli. Used with permission.

There's nothing like a peaceful summer evening. The sound of crickets and frogs in the air, a gentle breeze to cool off the days heat and -- oh-oh. Rover on your lap with the distinctive fragrance of Eau de Skunk.

It's the season, and those little striped ones show no mercy. Most commonly the run-ins are at night, but they can happen in the daytime also.

There are several common remedies that you can put together at home with varying degrees of success. A tomato juice rinse will help a bit if you can't get the other ingredients right away. Better than tomato juice is rinsing in liquid or reconstituted Masengill. Selsun Blue shampoo also helps.

The best of all is easily made at home from common ingredients found in your house. There are two recipes. The recipe with the smaller ratio of peroxide would be preferable for dogs whose coat color may be affected adversely by the peroxide.

Recipe #1
A formula for neutralizing skunk spray developed by Illinois chemist Paul Krebaum:
1 quart of 3% hydrogen peroxide,
1/4 cup of baking soda
1 teaspoon of liquid soap.

Apply it to the sprayed areas, then wash off with tap water. The solution must be mixed as needed; it can't be contained in a bottle.

Recipe #2
1 pint hydrogen peroxide
2/3 cup baking soda
1 tablespoon liquid soap, preferably citrus based

Mix this up at the time of use (will not work if not "right now fresh"). Sponge on dog. Let sit two to five minutes then rinse with plain water. If a second dose is needed mix a new batch from scratch. The mix reacts with the mercaptans (smelly chemicals in the skunk spray) and oxidizes them. If the mix is not fresh, the reaction will not work.

A little background on the hydrogen peroxide mix: This formula was submitted by William Radtke, who says, "My business partner (of a consulting firm which trained public safety personnel on chemical and biological agents a.k.a. terrorism) is a synthetic chemist and was a chemical weapons officer in the U.S. Army Rangers. The mix described was developed to remove mercaptans employed in industry and as military weapons. 'If ya can't see 'em coming, at least you can smell 'em.' "

Tomato juice, Masengill and Selsun Blue work because they tend to cut the oil base of the skunk spray but they do not really "kill" the odor. They just strip off the bulk of it. Skunk oil is meant to be persistent. A lasting memory of your encounter with the stripped kitty. Once it gets a grip just washing away the oil does not remove the smell, just reduces it.

Clothing can also be washed in the mix to remove the "perfume."

As a point of interest, do you know what natural gas smells like? Like nothing, so methyl mercaptan is added to give it its well recognized warning property odor. Skunks don't need any help, their mercaptan compounds come built in.