Seen One of These in Your Yard? Last Night, Unfortunately, My Dog Did

It looks like Illinois, and the Rockford area in particular, had a very successful skunk mating season. How do I know that? My dog Lucy got herself hosed down by a striped skunk last night, and the skunk appeared to have some little skunks cheering it on.

Here's the victim:

Last night, in our backyard, a good news/bad news scenario unfolded. The bad news was our Weimaraner, Lucy got a really good (by that, I mean really BAD) spray-down from the aforementioned skunk. The good news? I had already gone to bed, so my wife Amy had to deal with it.

According to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, skunk mating season here in Illinois has come and gone. Mating generally takes place between late February and mid-April, with the skunk "kits" being born between 60-72 days afterward. Mating season is when you'll smell skunks more than at any other time, as the males fight over potential mates, and more skunks are crossing roads to either find or escape suitors.

However, as many dog owners know, you or your dog (or both, if it's worst-case) can get royally "scented-up" at any time of the year except the dead of winter.

So, let's say you or the dog has a skunk encounter that results in a spraying. What do you do?

Since this is the second dog that we've had that took the worst of a skunk meet-and-greet, I've gotta tell you that for us, tomato juice DID NOT work as a remedy. We wasted perfectly good Bloody Mary mix only to wind up with a red-coated, smelly dalmatian. So this time, with Lucy, we found this video to be right on-point.

Now that you've got the dog smelling April fresh, how do you keep this sort of adventure from happening again?