Q. I read in your column about getting skunk smell off a dog. I had a dog that got skunked several times and the best natural remedy was plain tomato juice. I soaked him in it for about ten minutes and then washed him off with a dog shampoo. This eliminated the smell immediately. Maybe this will help someone.
A. Many other readers recommended tomato juice for removing skunk smell:
“When our dog tangled with a skunk years ago, I asked a neighbor with a PhD in chemistry. He said, ‘That’s an ethyl mercaptan; wash him with tomato juice.’ It worked, but a dog sleeping beside the bed smelling of tomato juice is no picnic either!”
One person was out camping when his dog met a skunk. The only tomato product within reach was a bottle of catsup, but it worked.
Another reader recommends cheap pure tomato juice rubbed on the dog, left for a few minutes, then washed off. She adds, “This also works on firemen who come home smelling like smoke. My husband is a firefighter, and whenever they have a fire, his hair and mustache always smell like smoke. For the first year of our marriage we’d wait for the smell to wear off. Then we tried the tomato juice remedy, and it worked!”
Another reader reports a different technique: “Our golden retriever got sprayed a while back. My wife decided to use the tomato juice method, but the one with the fur didn’t like it at all. My wife was splattered with juice; the dog was a mess.
“I called our vet and he laughed so hard he couldn’t talk. When he recovered, he said to put Scope Mouthwash in a spray bottle and spritz her all over. It worked. She had not a hint of smell after that.”
