How to deskunk your pet or yourself with stuff in your home!!!!

Okay this is what i was told to deskunk my dog and i was skeptical. my dog just got sprayed this morning and now she smells like her old self using this method. this is cheap and effective. dont attempt tomato juice cause it doesnt do anything but make a mess and dont spend a lot on expensive shampoos to fight this. you probably have this all at your house right now making it that much easier since you dont have to drive to a store while fido is stinking up the place

Items you will need are:

1. Baking Soda
2. Hydrogen Peroxide
3. Dawn dish soap

Step 1: Gather your ingredients

get your baking soda and hydrogen peroxide and dawn soap


make sure you have new bottle of hydrogen peroxide so it will work best

Comments

[annebelle671]

Wow! thanks for the recipe for this defumer! Works amazing!!! My dog and I truely smell better now.

[LakeLivin]

I can second (or third, or whatever) the efficacy of this mix.  Used it on my dog who got hit by a skunk several years ago, & it completely neutralized the smell.

One note of caution: be careful not to get the solution in your pets eyes!

OP thanks for posting.  Credit should also go to the guy who discovered this formula, a chemist named Paul Krebaum who was doing research using chemicals called thiols - some of the nastiest smelling chemicals around.  Thiols are produced by many things, including the degradation of proteins.  Thiols are responsible for the odors that come from decomposing flesh and fecal matter.  Thiols in skunk spray are what makes it so noxious.

[knotmedude]

I will gladly 'fourth' it.

[sciencefun]

Thank you for adding the history behind this method!   :D

[LakeLivin]

My pleasure.

If you want more, Google his name.  Kinda interesting story.  He came up with the mixture in the lab & it worked so well on the lab chemicals he went driving around and found a dead roadside skunk to test it on , lol.

[sciencefun]

LOL

[harshads]

great instructable!
I am just concerned that would anything happen to my dog (like allergy etc)?

[LakeLivin]

I'm no vet or chemist, but pretty innocuous components.  You can gargle with diluted hydrogen peroxide; baking soda is, well, baking soda; and then you've got the dishwashing detergent.  You thoroughly rinse the dog off with water after applying the solution.

Although I imagine you can't completely rule out a freak reaction, I'd wager the biggest risks are irritation if you get it in the dogs eyes (rinse thoroughly with water if so) or lightening the color of the dogs coat if you leave it on too long (don't leave it on too long, lol). 

[Sklarvv]

Cute doggy! Just wondering, do you think this would work if the stuff was mixed ahead of time? Like so I could keep a bottle around for emergencies?

[LakeLivin]

Actually, if you mix it and bottle it, it can explode.

[crazylikeacharger]

you could mix the peroxide and dish soap first but when you add the backing soda the reaction between the soda and peroxide you create will be long gone if you store it more than a few hours

[LakeLivin]

Plus you want the peroxide to be as fresh as possible, so working with an unopened bottle would be best.

[Sklarvv]

Ohh okay, thanks :)

[aztek5]

Yes, This does work. Cosmo gut skunked at 10:30 last nite and we called an emergency vet phone line and this is what they told us to use. Worked great. Now trying to get ride of smell in sun room.

[diva432]

Your dog is so adorable!

[crazylikeacharger]

thank you very much. she is cute but a pain when she gets restless

[cyme58]

Cute Dog! what kind of dog is it?

[crazylikeacharger]

Pure Bread Black Lab

[flyboy11]

please people if you have a beautiful black dog such as i do don't use peroxide it will lighten it's coat

[jauncourt]

No, it won't. The dilute peroxide (all regular hydrogen peroxide purchased from a store is very dilute, unlike the various concentrations used in hair processing) will only react with the coat if it is not already reacting with something else. In this case, it is reacting with the skunk's spray. On heavily skunked animals, it can even take more than one application to get the dog clean. I have used this method to clean a skunked dog, and she had no fading in the darker parts of her hair. Finally, if one's dog has been skunked, the main worry is getting the dog clean, not maintaining the dog's appearance.

[Sunny124613]

you know wht,my dog rooled in feces a couple days ago and all we did was shampoo,but she still reeked! well,I hope that I can do this the next time..... MY DOG!!!

[dchall8]

Great information. This recipe does work. My dog has gotten hit twice. She learned a little from the first hit, but she learned more from the second one. I don't expect her to get close enough to a skunk for a third event. Her breed instinct is to chase down small animals (cats, squirrels, and really anything that will run) but not catch or kill it. The first time she found a skunk I saw her tear off toward the tree line. Then I saw her do an end over end flip! I thought, "well that isn't normal for her!" But her instinct to chase held her on that skunk way too long. Then she came running back to me and I had to figure out how to get her home. We walked. Ugh! She had droplets of skunk juice all over the very short hair on her face and the long hair around her face. Skunk susceptibility is breed sensitive. When I had a more of a pure chow, her breed instinct was to chase things down and kill them before they knew what hit them. She may have found skunks because we played in the same area, but I never smelled anything on her. Any animal she caught was either killed in about a second or hit her with open claws. She had many a battle scar. I did not have hydrogen peroxide so I used Oxyclean (actually the Wal-Mart store brand of the same chemical). That stuff works by generating hydrogen peroxide when it dissolves. My dog did not smell absolutely perfect right away, but she only spent that first night sleeping outside. Neither peroxide nor baking soda have any odor that humans can smell. If your animal has a fragrance after this treatment, it is from the skunk or the soap. This mix works by a chemical oxidation of the skunk's biological chemical scent. The hydrogen peroxide is highly reactive with biological materials. The excess oxygen molecule attaches to the skunk junk and oxidizes it. The end result is sort of a "skunk oxide." I am not sure what role the sodium bicarbonate plays but I know it is a powerful antifungal agent. Anyone else know?

[Purkinje]

I believe the sodium bicarbonate is used to create a buffer solution. Normally a buffer would be the a weak base (or acid) with its salt. Once the NaOH has started to be neutralized, it will release sodium salts composed of the neutralized amine from the skunk therefore providing the salt into the buffering of sodium bicarbonate. I wonder it the reaction would be too fast without the sodium bicarb and potentially too exothermic for the animal.

[crazylikeacharger]

please vote for me if you like this Instructable

[deana56]

I had a cocker spaniel that was our defender against skunks, over and over again. This works amazingly well!

[ReddWolf]

Actually, the chemist who came up with this mixture DOES NOT recommend using Dawn. He recommends using a more inert brand such as Ivory. A grease-cutting detergent like Dawn causes more auto-decomposition of the H2O2 and may make the mixture less effective.

Additionally I would not recommend leaving this mixture on a dog for more than 10 minutes, especially with a dark colored dog, like the black dog in the photos here. If the smell is not gone in that time, re-apply a fresh batch of the mixture rather than leaving it sitting on the dog. If you apply the mixture and let it sit, you may end up bleaching your dog's fur! This happened with a friend of mine whose black Lab was skunked on her head/neck. Her owner decided to leave the mixture on for about 15 minutes figuring it would be more likely to get all the smell out. She ended up with a black Lab with a brown head! I saw her dog several weeks later and could still tell the difference in fur color.

[Chef Maki]

Need more dog pictures. :-) I used the same method when my dog was skunked. It worked well but the real test is getting someone else to smell the dog. The odor from the skunk is so pungent that it will shut down your olfactory senses after 15 minutes.

[JJEXP]

Johnson and Johnson no tears baby shampoo works wonders for this

[GorillazMiko]

Cute dog, but why is he eating the poor alligator? :P Just kidding. Great job, I like this method!

[gmjhowe]

Aww, hes got its head in its mouth!

[zomfibame]

cool, I had not heard o' that method before; I'd always heard, and used Tomato juice, and/or (no joke) ... Summer's Eve douche. a buddy of mine had a dog that got sprayed a couple of times along the way; and when I was a kid we had a black cat with a white stripe down his belly and part of his back....he got sprayed verry bad once. from then on he was called skunkie; cuz' if it looks like a skunk n' smells like a skunk.... it ought to be called one.