Owning a yellow lab is hard to describe. You love them with your whole heart but there are days when they drive you crazy…This was one of those days…
Peter and I had just moved from Scranton, PA to Columbus, Ohio. We had been in our new house for a few days. Everything was still in boxes. Our son was six weeks old. He had just been discharged from the NICU where he spent 5 ½ weeks. He was still on an apnea monitor. This is a device that keeps track of his breathing and heart rate. If either one goes too high or too low an alarm sounds.
It was ten o’clock at night and the baby was in his swing and I was attached to the breast pump. Peter let Buddy (the lab) and Poncho (the pug) out in the backyard before bed. Our neighborhood has lots of green space and this includes the area that surrounds our backyard. There are raccoons, skunks, deer, squirrels, chipmunks, snakes, mice, and lots of birds.
Peter opened the door to the laundry room that leads to the backyard to let the dogs in the house. Buddy came charging in tail in full swing. Peter could tell he had “something” in his mouth but couldn’t see what “it” was at that moment. Buddy continued into the kitchen and front hallway with his “treat.” I saw Peter chasing him and laughing. Suddenly a smell so awful and pungent terrorized my nose. It filled my nostrils and then burst into my lungs with a horrible musky and burning sensation. Horror slowly crept into my brain as I recognized the smell. I screamed “get that dog out of this house!!!” Peter, who was still laughing and chasing Buddy around said “he has some kind of animal and he has perforated its bowls.” To which I replied, “HE HAS A SKUNK…DON’T YOU RECOGNIZE THAT SMELL…GET HIM OUT OF THE HOUSE…NOW!!!” At this point I was frantically trying to detattch from the breast pump and get our son to a safe location. My lungs were on fire so I could only imagine what the smell was doing to the baby’s delicate system. Simultaneously Peter got Buddy outside. “Start cleaning it up”, I yelled. My husband in all his infinite wisdom grabbed a paper towel and put it on the floor. Then he put his foot on top of the paper towel and started rubbing the towel around in circles. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” I SCREAMED. Peter is STILL laughing as he answered me that he was cleaning “it” up. My voice still animated I explained to him that all he was doing was smearing it around. “Well, what should I do?” he asked. I ran to the cupboard and grabbed a jar of spaghetti sauce opened it and flung it all over the floor. Peter was laughing so hard he could barely ask me what the heck I was doing. I told him that tomato juice neutralizes skunk spray. “Oh,” he said. “Well I am going to get Buddy.” Just like in the exorcist my head spun around on my shoulder and I roared, “That dog is NOT coming back in this house.” Again Peter laughed. “It is not funny,” I choked out. The smell was so overpowering now that I was at our kitchen sink wretching over and over again and cursing the day Buddy was born. I instructed Peter to take Stephen upstairs to the master bedroom, turn on the fan, open the windows (oh yeah did I mention most of the windows did have screens on them!!!) and shut the door. I grabbed the swiffer wet jet and began scrubbing the floor. I rolled up the runner in the front hallway and chucked it outside. There was a trail of skunk spray from the laundry room through the kitchen and into the front hallway. Buddy had his nosed pressed against the door begging to come in. No way!!! I mopped the floor literally ten times. I finally went upstairs to check on the baby. I walked in the bedroom and burst into tears. I begged Peter to take us to a hotel for the night. AGAIN he laughed. “I am breathing the same air you are,” he stated. “Yeah, well I just got out of the hospital and your son is on an apnea monitor.” My son was sound asleep, completely oblivious to his hysterical mother. Rational thought slowly reached my brain cells as I ironically took a deep breath and realized that my lungs no longer felt like they were on fire. I told Peter Buddy could come in the house but he would have to sleep in his crate in the basement. Peter went downstairs and unbeknownst to me at the time put Buddy and his crate in the front hall closet and shut the door. That damn closet still has a hint of skunk smell.
Peter, the baby and I retired to the master bedroom on the third floor. The next morning Peter had to be at work by 7am because a group of them were driving to Indiana. Once again in his infinite wisdom, Peter let Buddy in our bedroom before he left. He didn’t want Buddy to be lonely. Seriously??? The smell hit me like a ton of bricks. I bolted upright and said to the air, “you have got to be kidding me?” I put the baby in his swing and dragged the swing to the doorway that led to the backyard so I could watch the baby while I attempted to clean up Buddy. I dragged Buddy outside. Everything we had was still packed. The only things I could find to wash that stupid dog was baby shampoo and a bucket. I think Buddy knew his life depended on the fact that he better not try and move away from me. I washed him three times. In the process I noticed an open wound on his face. “Oh great,” I thought to myself…”the skunk must have bit him.” I called Peter and asked if any of the people he was with knew if there was a vet close to our house. Thank God Ron, who lives in our neighborhood, was with him. I called the vet and got an appointment for that day. I packed up the baby and Buddy and trekked off to the vet. Two techs met me in the parking lot to help me juggle the baby and the dog. As I sat in the lobby waiting for our turn this tall leggy blonde comes out of the patient area. She sniffed the air and said “are you by any chance Kristi Cimbolic?” Oh dear God was all I could think. “Yeah, that’s me and this is my stinky dog.” She introduced herself and told me that she worked for my husband and that she had heard Buddy had eaten a skunk. Word travels fast. It hadn’t even been 24 hours and Buddy was famous…or I should say infamous.
The vet checked Buddy’s wound and explained he had rubbed the skin off trying to rub the skunk smell off his face. She put him on antibiotics and gave me a remedy to bath him in to deskunk him. “Oh yeah…she said. “Welcome to Columbus.”
We returned home and I headed into the laundry room to throw the clothes in the washer that had gotten skunked. The baby was napping so I called the ODU helpdesk to set up my email account. While I was on the phone with the tech I heard a snap, crackle, pop. I told the tech I had to go and I ran into the laundry room. As I entered the room sparks were shooting up from behind the laundry room and water was pooling around my feet. I ran over to the washer to shut off the electricity and the water. As I reached over to turn everything off sparks shot up in my face. I jumped up and smacked my head on the cabinets above the washer. I marched out to the kitchen punched Peter’s cell number into the phone and burst into tears. When he answered all I could say was “I want to move back to Pennsylvania.”
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