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Skunks!
And
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Read a little bit about my |
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| I've had plenty of encounters with skunks. I don't work as
hard as I should to break my dogs off of skunks. My dogs don't run skunks
where I normally hunt so I don't think much about them until AFTER they've
been sprayed. Just last night my ten year old dog got sprayed because she
was chasing one. It really should be easy to break them if I'd just bother
to do it. I'm probably a little unusual in that the smell of skunks really
doesn't bother me. The only reason I'd really like to break my dogs from
skunks is so they wouldn't be penalized for it in field trials.
Deadeye (Galen) was a pretty good skunk dog (when he wasn't chasing deer!). I think he must have been sprayed at least 3 or 4 times every year of his life. He would really get covered with the scent too. I live in town & some days you could smell him two blocks away. I was relatively skunk free after Deadeye was gone. Then Tilly came along and her skunk story is a little unusual. She proved to me that you could take a perfectly good dog and ruin it. Tilly was probably the straightest dog I ever had. I was confident in her and I would hunt her with anybody even if their dogs were professional junk runners. She was what I considered a check dog. I could send her into other dogs & if she didn't bark, that meant they were running junk. Finally, one fall night she cracked. I heard her open and run a short track and tree. I found her on a little tree with a hole at the base. I ran a stick up the tree to see what was in there. Almost immediately the smell of skunk spray rolled out of the base of the tree. I could hardly believe this. First that my dog would chase a skunk. Then that a skunk would lay a track like that and finally that a skunk would go up in a hollow tree. I figured it was just a freak occurrence and I didn't really scold Tilly too much. I just leashed her and went home. Well, Tilly changed that night. She chased skunks from that night on & I never broke her. I sold her shortly after that & the new owner said she chased skunks regularly. After all these years I'm still amazed at how Tilly just snapped like that one night. After Tilly, I had a few more relatively skunk free years, then came Mabel. She's one of my all time favorites, but she runs junk from time to time. At about 7 months old I caught her on a track that she'd been running for about 1/2 mile. I suspected it was a skunk at the time but had no proof. A few months later she ran a track the same way. This time it ended in a standoff with a skunk on top of a rock pile. I worked on breaking Mabel & she got pretty good in my hunting spots. When I hunt her in strange spots she'd tend to get junky. I worked some more and I broke her (or slowed her down) on just about every type of trash except for skunk. I think it's just in her blood. She's out of Rebel & I think he had a taste for skunks hardwired right in. I've seen a several Rebel pups that just can't seem to leave skunks alone. It's not every night, just once or twice a year, usually when you're trying to impress your friends. Getting rid of the evidence:Well, if you are like me, then your dog will be stinking some nights & you'll want to fix that. I've tried some of the "skunk off" products from the local pet store. They help but my dogs still stink. I've tried tomato juice & that works good in the field. It makes a mess though & I wanted something else. My mother works with dogs & she gave me a recipe for cleaning up a dog that's been sprayed. Give it a try the next time ol' fido goes off the deep end. Mix a batch of homemade skunk off: Wash the dog with your mixture and then use a rinse of equal parts
vinegar and water.
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