Country living at its finest. It was bound to happen. It was only a matter of time.

I was far away. Way far away. So deep in sleep, I couldn’t even tell you what I was dreaming about. Whatever it was, something in my dream smelled…really bad. What is that? And just like that, I was wide awake. and I had no idea what time it was, but it was still very dark outside.

I couldn’t quite figure out what the smell was. Did one of the dogs have an accident in the bedroom?  Is something burning? Why are the dogs  outside begging to come in instead of curled up on their beds? By this time I was sitting straight up in bed. My eyes were fuzzy, but my nose was working just fine.

About that time, JD came into the bedroom and I could tell something was not right. In fact, I knew something was terribly wrong.

As usual, Rodeo woke JD up at about 5:00 wanting to go outside. He said the minute he opened the door, the dogs were out and off into the tall grass tracking an animal. Since it was dark, he had a flashlight with him (no street lights, so it’s pretty dark outside), and then he saw it. Something black. And then…oh no, not the white stripes. Lucy! Rodeo! Come here!!!

Lucy stopped and came back pretty quick. I’m guessing one spray from the skunk was enough for her. But Rodeo….well, Rodeo is still a puppy and she has no common sense whatsoever! In fact, some kind of biological event takes place when her sense of smell kicks in, her hearing completely shuts down, and she will not come back when called. She chased that skunk probably until there was no stink left to spray, but eventually she came back. Poor JD didn’t want to go chase her down so he waited patiently (not!) for her.

He opened the door and ran them out into the backyard. Now, it’s maybe 30ish feet from the front door to the back, and in that short distance of them running from one door to the other, the entire house was filled with skunk smell.

And that is what woke me up.

Because I’m a mom, instantly my mind starts working. And, being that I am of the Brady bunch generation, I quickly remembered when the Brady’s dog “Tiger” was on the receiving end of  skunk and hey bathed him in tomato sauce. Or was it tomato juice? As I was lying in bed (JD did tell me to go back to sleep since I had to get up and work!) I found myself wondering how much tomato sauce I had on hand. I’ll bet I can come up with a couple of cans, but I know I don’t have any tomato juice. It was about this time that my common sense woke up. Surely that wont work, I’ll Google it and see what kind of online help there is.

The common recipe consisted of hydrogen peroxide, dish washing soap, and baking soda. Seems a bit harsh. Then I remembered seeing a bottle of “Skunk Off” the last time we were at the vet’s office. So at 7:30am, I was on the front porch waiting for the vet’s office to open, but before I left I lit every scented candle I could put my hands on and opened the windows (fortunately, it’s open window season here).

In the end, the “Skunk Off” worked great, the wind was blowing, the house aired out and the dogs are back to smelling like dogs much sooner than I anticipated.

When things go awry, I frequently tell my daughter, “one day this will be funny.” Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait too long. We are already laughing about it, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I was slightly (okay more than slightly) worried that JD was also going to smell like skunk for a while!