If your dog has been sprayed by a skunk

Last Updated on June 20, 2024 by Michelle

If your dog has been sprayed by a skunk, grab 4 things from your kitchen and get the oils off immediately…

If your dog has been sprayed by a skunk

1. Get your dog RIGHT IN THE TUB. Do NOT let him walk around the house while you read this. This was the biggest mistake I made. The house smelled like skunk for weeks.

2. Grab 4 items and get to work:

Murphy’s oil soap (dish soap if you don’t have Murphy’s)
baking soda
hydrogen peroxide
vinegar

3. Apply the 4 magical items in this order and put each round on without rinsing the previous round.

murphys oil soap–scrub it in where ever the dog got sprayed.
baking soda–really scrub this in, and let it sit for 5 minutes. I used an old cleaning brush to scrub it in.
hydrogen peroxide–I poured this on the brush then scrubbed it over top of the baking powder. Let this round sit for 10-15 minutes.
vinegar–this is the final round and can be rinsed off immediately.

What to do next

If your dog is rid of the skunk oils at this point (surprisingly Bixby was) brush his teeth a few times. (I actually did that while we were waiting in the hydrogen peroxide stage.) And, of course, while he’s in the tub, give him a quick bath to hopefully get off all the smells.

If after one round of these cleaners you can still smell lingering skunk oils, repeat all 4 steps. As many times as needed.

What else can you do?

There are many other simple solutions that are, I’m told, pretty effective and I wrote about them the first time Bixby danced with a black-and-white stripped friend a few years ago. Read all of those ideas right here. (Why oh why didn’t he learn?)

But–true story–when Bixby got sprayed tonight I pulled up that old post of mine to remember what worked best the first time and I got confused trying to quickly–under stress–find the info I needed sooooo I thought this topic was worthy of a simple, straight-forward post laying out the best way we’ve found for dealing with the nastiness when a dog gets sprayed by a skunk.

It’s bound to happen.

Of course it’s bound to happen when you live rurally and you have a dog, but I kinda hope Bixby’s done dancing with his black-and-white-stripped friends.

If you’d like to know how I trained Bixby to be an amazing homestead dog who never chases the free-ranging chickens or ducks, I’ve written the full scoop about that and I have printables in my Resource Library as well.

Now if I could only train him that the skunks are off limits.

Talk to me!

If you have any questions, leave a comment below. And please tag me on ig to introduce me to your favorite pooch (whether he or she has or has not tangled with a skunk) @souly.rested.