George in Trouble

We drove back to town yesterday and as usual, George rushed straight down to the garden door and sat there, waiting patiently while we unpacked the car and got ourselves re-oriented. He was anxious to get out there to chase his ball along the long brick paths that lead up and down, on either side of the garden. It's his favorite occupation. I suspect that he thinks this is his mission, his life's work, in the same way I think about my writing. It's what he was put here to do, and he takes it with the utmost seriousness of purpose.

Surprise, then, when I finally took him out, that instead of chasing the ball I'd thrown he disappeared into the undergrowth, snuffling around with great enthusiasm until he gave a little yelp and emerged to start scraping furiously at his eye and face... a sign I recognized from a previous, similar encounter: he'd been skunked. It was only then that the hideous odor reached my nostrils...

The garden hose had no effect, other than to reduce the poor dog to a bedraggled, shivering mess. I had yelled up to forewarn Ellie, and she was quickly on the computer to check out remedies. I tried a first application of apple cider vinegar and dishwashing liquid while she made a quick run to the supermarket to buy baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, Dawn soap and Oxyclean--the mixture of which in proper proportions seemed to have proved for others in George's predicament. Mixed tother, they produced a witch's brew that hissed horribly and boiled over onto the washing machine, running down to the laundry room floor. Another mess. I rescued the bottles and packages that had now alarmingly accumulated, while Ellie doused the poor dog in her poisonous-looking brew.

Once the stink seemed to have somewhat subsided, we wrapped him in towels and took him up to the kitchen sink for a good rinse--in stone cold water: we discovered that, in our absence, the water heater had gone on the blink, another problem! Then out to the balcony for a towel-dry in the still warm sunshine.

The upshot: poor George still stinks from his adventure, but perhaps a little less than he might have done without our ministrations.



He actually looks pretty relaxed about the whole thing. But you can't smell him from where you are!