Chapter 11 – Life on the Inside

Riggs is pretty well contained these days. Now when she gets out it usually out a door as someone comes in, or a gate left open by a child.
So for the most part life is good inside the fence.
However, even being contained she managed to get herself sprayed by a skunk. Full on in the face.

As soon as we realized what had happened, we had to think quickly. If Riggs just got sprayed by a skunk, then the skunk was inside the fence. If Riggs is inside the fence and a skunk is inside the fence and WE are inside the fence this greatly increased the probability of more spraying.
So …nitwit that I am – I immediately took her into the mudroom. Where we both immediately teared up and coughed until we choked… it didn't really dawn on me that being closed up in a really small room was NOT a good idea. Luckily my clear headed wife yelled to us to go BACK outside. (there was a lot of YELLING…not angry YELLING…but the kind of YELLING that happens when you are in an emergent situation…as if you need to speak loudly and clearly over the din of the event).

Of course we had to throw everything away that had been in the mudroom with us.

Ok so now…we need to wash.
The little wrinkle with that is …Riggs is petrified of the bath.
So we started by giving her a sponge bath out on the patio with LOTS of tomato juice. And then did it again. Then we heard we should be using vinegar and water douches. So we went to CVS and bought out their supply of Massengills. You can imagine the looks we got…(just what are those lesbians up to?).
We found that the douche works quite well actually. The vinegar seems to really get out alot of the odor and the applicator is shaped perfectly for a dog whose been sprayed right in the face.

After two tomato juice bathes and more than a few douches -- she was still not quite ready for re-entry into the general living area, so we coerced her into the tub.
Of course I had to get in with her, while my steadfast wife stood right behind me to thwart any escapes. After some initial thrashing about, she settled down enough so that the bath went fairly well. And really we only sustained very minor injuries.

So for a couple of bucks in feminine supplies and cans of juice it wasn’t so bad, well unless you factor in all the stuff we had to throw away…various lunch bags, a pair of flip flops, the throw rug, a hat…

And now of course we had to figure out how to keep skunks OUT. There’s always something to be done when you have a fence.

Next week we’ll tally up the results. I also have some pics from around the house of stuff yet-to-be-repaired. I suppose I will include those as a future expense.