Jack has been skunked!

I was having trouble sleeping last night and Jack was (mostly) staying awake to keep me company. Around 2:30 am he asked to go out for a pee so I let him and that’s when it happened. Right in our own yard and 5 meters from our front door. He got a big dose too with sticky, stinky skunk goo from his nose to his tail.

There’s a fairly simple recipe that works well to break up the oils in skunk spray and I went around the house gathering supplies. Pails of water, dog towels, Vaseline (to keep water out of his eyes), dish soap, baking soda and….no peroxide. No Peroxide! That’s the liquid into which  you add the dish soap and baking soda to make the shampoo. It’s essential, so I got in the car and started driving around to convenience stores trying to find some. We live in a fairly small city of about 40,000 people and none of the big stores are open 24 hours. Finally, at my 5th stop I found 2 overpriced small bottles of peroxide, which was not quite enough, but it felt like I’d just won the lottery.

We bathed him in the back yard and got enough of the smell off that Jack was allowed back inside. It was almost 5 am by the time we were finished and fell into bed. Jack wisely slept in his dog bed instead of trying to get up with us. At 8:30 the alarm went off and I trudged to the drugstore to stock up on peroxide and then I took Jack down to the river, waded in wearing old sneakers and repeated the shampoo and let him rinse himself off with a frolic instead of the unpleasantness of having buckets of water (warm water!)  poured all over you.

I still have a stinky pile of towels plus the clothes we were wearing to wash, but that’s just going to have to wait. I need sleep first and that’s exactly what I’m going to do now. Night, night.

Our local strawberries have been uncommonly flavourful and sweet this year. The small ones in particular are almost like candy. I’ve been overindulging, but the season is almost at its end and soon they’ll be gone for another year. That’s OK though, because now local raspberries and cherries and blueberries are ripe and ready and they too seem extra sweet this year. Maybe it was the late spring or the early heat wave, but whatever the cause I plan to keep overindulging in all the fresh produce that’s on offer.

Jack and I enjoy finding new  places to explore so this morning we tried a new trail that had been recommended to us by a friend. The entire trail stretches 3 km which is a longish walk for both Jack and I, but we had water and a snack and I planned to have a rest or two along the way. The morning was warm, but not humid and we set out full of the spirit of adventure. The trail winds through an area of mixed hardwood and fir trees and it’s beautiful. Everything was going along well until we came upon a pond. That’s when things started to go wrong. The area around the pond was humid and full of mosquitoes so we veered away from it and somehow got off the main trail. We clambered along a small path for a bit still being chased by vampire insects until we finally found a larger path and took it in what I thought was the direction back. The mosquitoes stayed with us though and poor Jack’s nose was being bloodied by the damn things. I was faring better because I had on DEET, but they were biting through my shirt and pants to the places that I didn’t bug spray. We stopped for water twice, but couldn’t really rest. I finally saw a clearing ahead and sighed relief that we had made it back to the parking lot…only it wasn’t the parking lot. It was a field of grain. I should mention here that there was no field of grain anywhere near the entrance to the trail so we were obviously off course. The mosquitoes weren’t too bad though so we did finally stop for a good rest. I pulled out my cell phone, found a map of the trail and figured out that we were actually on a totally different trail that connects to our original trail and that the only way back was the way we just came…through the mosquito tunnel until we picked up the main trail again. Thankfully, by the time we got going a good breeze had come up which helped control the mozzies a bit and our way home was long, but not intolerable. I even stopped at the pond for a few photos because it really is incredibly beautiful, we were already uncomfortable and I won’t be back this way anytime soon. I’ll try to get them up in a day or two, but right now Jack and I are crashed and recovering from a bit more adventure than we bargained for.

 

We’ve had beautiful weather here since the extreme heat of last week finally broke on Thursday night. Temps have been in the twenties with low humidity and the nights have been cool and comfortable. That’s due to change tomorrow when temperatures are expected to climb into the thirties again so Jack and I plan to spend most of the day outside while we still can.

The weather has finally broken and today is actually cool and comfortable. Jack and I had a pleasant, leisurely walk that didn’t feel like we were plodding along with lead in our shoes. Even better, we found a sunny patch of wild raspberries that was warm and sweet and came home with red stained fingers and happy smiles.

 

 

When I was nursing we used to have something called a triple H enema, which stood for High, Hot and a Hell of a lot. Today is a triple H kind of day…High (temp 31°) Hot (humidity 80%) and Hell (ish). It’s too hot for Jack to even go for a walk so instead I pre-cooled the car and took him to the lake for a swim. He happily paddled around for about 20 minutes while I lounged in the shade of a willow tree and then we hurried back home to the luxury of our air-conditioned house. We won’t be seen outside again until after dark.