He loves people.
He learns quickly. He knows that the beeping on the security camera monitor means that someone is coming. He gets very excited about the UPS guy, the FedEx guy, the letter carrier or B&B guests. They are all equally wonderful and deserving of his exuberant welcome.
He has one area where he is as dumb as a box of rocks. Ok. Two. One: he should not be quite as exuberant with guests. We're working on that. WE are. Not RJ.
Two: skunks. If you are a regular reader, you know that RJ has a love (read extreme hatred) of skunks. He wants to get him one of them furry, slow moving critters. And he is fast enough and determined enough to be quite successful at it.
But he is not good at avoiding the dreaded spray.
Yesterday he got caught again. AGAIN. It was during the day and skunks are nocturnal, so we don't know where he ran across this one. Maybe a dead one or a spot where the skunk sprayed somebody else and RJ got the oily spray on him. Not a massive amount, but a little skunk spray goes a long way.
We don't know where he found this noxious substance. All we knew was that he smelled bad, had rolled in the dirt to get it off and now he was filthy...and odoriferous. And our next group of guests was arriving in a few hours. I called the local dog groomer. She was booked up. Oh, goody.
Fortunately, the guy that built this house had a car he loved. So he installed hot and cold water and a drain in the garage. He built it to bathe his car in the winter. We use it to bathe our dog in the winter...and spring...you get the idea. So, more hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and Dawn dish detergent. More rubbing this solution into the stinky dog. More rinsing and shampooing the mostly not stinky dog. Then drying and brushing the now basically clean dog.
I suppose it was all for the best. After a good scrubbing, a lot of his loose hairs are no longer floating around the house. They were no longer on RJ, but quite a few were on me.
So he is clean and happy. Granted, before he was filthy and happy, but that is just his attitude. No problem, let's chase deer! Or, in this case, skunks!
If painful and stinky shots to the face and massive amounts of scrubbing and rubbing don't cure him, I can't imagine what will. On the other hand, if he was a football player we would admire his strength and fortitude. But football players wash themselves when they get stinky!
Oh man oh man.... Sad for RJ and you and so much work to get the stink off. Feeling for ya. Our pups treed another cat yesterday that came onto our property...lucky it was not a cat with a stripe down it's back and a stinky rear end.
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