Each dog brings unique gifts to their human guardian. I have been woven into who I am by the dogs I have loved and lost. Each dog found me at a time when I needed the lessons only they could reveal. From my coming of age in New Jersey through my restless retirement and my journey through grief and loss. aging and chronic illness, there was one constant- a dog by my side. In telling their stories, I really tell my own.
This story is a memory of one of many lessons learned from Max, a rescued Golden Retriever who shared my life until he left me at the age of fifteen. Max shared my life during a time of some of my greatest challenges. But he and I also shared a sense of mischief, and he brought me laughter at a time I needed it. He taught me fun, joy and courage in hard times and many more lessons about life and myself. He knew me better than I knew myself. This is one of my favorite stories about Max. It illustrates how I learned from Max (and a skunk) the dangers of stereotypes and that “skunk” is a verb. Even today, years later, on days that I need some laughter, I just pull this out of my Max memories and remember his goofy Golden Retriever grin as we realized we had learned what it meant to be “skunked.” It’s inspired by true events… at least it’s how I remember them.
– JLS 2026
*****
Skunks are smarter than I thought.
I had just drifted off to sleep at 3am when I felt Max, my Golden Retriever, licking my face. I opened one eye to peek at him. I turned over, thinking he would probably go back to sleep in his monogrammed dog bed. It was the first cool night of November in Texas. I slept better in the cold, so I hoped to drift back to cozy slumber. Max had other ideas. Two brown Golden Retriever eyes found their mark on my one open eye and beamed in an unmistakable message, “Max needs to go out, and now.”
Barefooted, I grabbed my fluffy pink robe and stumbled down the winding staircase to open the backyard door. Max launched off the deck and into the night like a golden heat-seeking missile. I thought, “Man, he must really have to go.” I heard the grandfather clock in front of me strike three times in my ear. I yearned to get back under my quilt. Half asleep, I waited for a long ten minutes, unaware of the impending doom.
Max blasted back through the door, past me, and headed straight to the new Oriental rug in the foyer. The 70-pound dog assumed a pose resembling an animated downward-facing dog that I had once unsuccessfully attempted in a long-abandoned yoga class. Max rubbed sticky, oozing liquid off his face and snorted the remainder of the skunk spray across the foyer, where it landed in a perfect scatter gram on the wall. The odor wafted up to me and engulfed my fluffy pink robe. I was on my knees now, trying to wipe Max’s eyes. Fumes hit me. It didn’t take an advanced degree in wildlife science to deduce that Max had rendezvoused with a skunk. I could hardly breathe, but I gathered just enough breath to yell up the stairs to my still blissfully sleeping husband.
“Max got sprayed by a skunk!”
“You didn’t let him back in the house, did you?” My sleeping husband was wide awake now.
I reminded myself that rhetorical questions do not need answer.
Now, as a baby boomer with enough miles on me to be considered a classic, I know things. I have learned that sometimes you can understand the general concept of a thing in an abstract sense, but you can’t fully appreciate it until you experience its reality. Get into the details; then you know. I didn’t fully appreciate the genuine skunk experience-yet. The reality of getting face to face with a golden retriever who had entertained a skunk in the middle of the night turned out to be a whole lot less entertaining than I, a Jersey girl, ever expected.
I had good reason to romanticize skunk scenarios. I was raised a city girl and am a transplant to Texas from New Jersey. I never saw a real skunk, although I often visited with our neighbor’s fat black and white cat, Oreo, who easily could have passed for a skunk on a moonless night. The closest I ever got to a live skunk was in my childhood when my family journeyed on our Sunday drives on the New Jersey Turnpike bound for the Jersey Shore. We wanted to escape the summer heat and were in search of nature, fresh air, and open space, that mythical New Jersey oasis. About an hour into the drive, a vaguely familiar smell would waft into our old, lumbering Buick. Everyone swaying in the low-rider seats would raise their eyebrows and dramatically sniff a few times. Two adults and two of us bored kids in the back seat would look at each other, flash a grin, nod knowingly, and shout, “polecat” in our best “Red Alert” level voices. Everyone then returned to watching and smelling the smoke from the puffing oil refineries of Newark as it passed by the dusty, cracked car windows. The turnpike scents mixed with polecat perfume signaled to this Jersey girl that good times must be ahead.
I left New Jersey for Texas on a new journey over forty years ago, following my spouse, whose job brought him to Texas, the land of cowboy hats, boots, salsa, giant mosquitoes with attitude, and armadillos. I loved everything Texan, including its wildlife, and still do. But I never expected to experience the wrath of a blank and white varmit.
My concept of the consequences of an encounter between a dog and skunk was a Disney version reminiscent of Bambi and Flower, Bambi’s adorable talking skunk pal. When Bambi first met the little skunk, he called the spraying rodent a little flower. Thumper, Bambi’s bunny pal, laughed and tried to correct Bambi, but the skunk said he didn’t mind being called Flower despite his innate tendency to stink up the forest. Thus, my skunk stereotype evolved. I thought all skunks were adorable, and, like Bambi’s Flower, I appreciated irony. That was about to change. I had a lot to learn about what that old saying, “the devils in the details,” really meant when it came to skunks and life. My journey to the reality of skunkdom began. I was about to discover that you can never truly understand an experience (or a person or a skunk) until you experience it. Beware of stereotypes.
The November night rolled forward as two baby boomers and a repentant golden retriever underwent a total skunk immersion. My eyes burned from fumes rising from Max’s golden retriever coat. My husband claimed. “We have been hit by chemical warfare, and now the dog wants to cuddle.”
The smell to end all smells permeated and overwhelmed our two-story house. I had no idea where that black and white varmint with anger issues had gone, but I hoped he had fully expressed his aggressive feelings. My husband and I had no idea what to do with a thoroughly skunked golden retriever. It was 3:45 am, and we needed help.
WE WERE SKUNK VIRGINS
In addition to being a city-raised baby boomer, I am a modern woman. When in doubt, I Google. I located just what we needed: the 24-hour Emergency Veterinary Clinic number, just 10 minutes away. I knew we were in good shape. I was armed with Google Maps and a GPS.
A perky young woman at the Emergency Vet Clinic answered my urgent call promptly and asked how she could help. I was dying to find out. She listened as I described our current skunk situation, Max’s appearance, and our desperate plight. I heard the steady click, click of computer keys while I rushed through my story. I assumed either it was a slow night for animal emergencies or that she had applied some triage to us and determined that getting skunked was not a genuine medical emergency. She just kept clicking those keys in my ear and saying, “uh huh.” It did not sound like an animal ambulance was heading our way anytime soon.
Finally, she asked, “You mean he got skunked?”
“What?”
“Skunked, he got sprayed by a skunk?”
“Yes, that’s why I’m calling, what should we do?”
In rapid, clipped speech, she ran off a list of products to mix up in a skunk remedy solution. I cannot remember the details, but the multiple ingredient concoction sounded vaguely disturbing, much like my ill-fated high school chemistry experiment. I asked her to slow down and repeat the list three more times. She may have sensed I was in her Senior Pet Parents demographic because she started talking like my old answering machine with a low battery, carefully pronouncing every consonant. I looked at my poor Golden Retriever. I was getting desperate.
“Can’t we just bring him there?”
“Bring him here?” Her voice was much faster now and had gone up a good four octaves.
I heard someone yelling in the background. “NO, NO don’t bring him here.”
“Who is that,” I asked.
“It’s the veterinarian.”
I said to my husband. “It sounds like he’s experienced with skunks.”
I WAS STARTING TO FEEL THE REALITY OF GETTING “SKUNKED.”
I hung up. We were on our own for the night. The following day we contacted our veterinarian. The office manager and I reviewed the night’s events and Max’s status. She told me to bring Max to the clinic. They would examine him and bathe him. Her next question was the stumper.
“Do you have any tomato juice?”
“Tomato juice?” I said.
I wondered if we were going to share a Bloody Mary. I knew I could sure use one.
“We might need tomato juice and a lot of it. We might need to bathe him in it.”
I bolted to look in my pantry. “How about a can of V-8?”
The manager quickly dispatched a vet tech out on a stat tomato juice run. and then commanded me, “Bring Max in an hour but go to the BACK DOOR. Whatever you do, don’t bring him through the waiting room.”
One hour later, I delivered Max to the back door of the Vet Clinic. Six hours later, I went to the clinic’s front desk to pick him up. The front door, back door, and any other orifice that opened in the Vet Clinic were propped wide open. There was not a soul in the waiting room. The entire clinic, which, on most occasions, was antiseptic, polished, and filled with dog and cat coziness, now wreaked of the same pungent smell as our home. The staff waved me off at the front door to go pick Max up again at the back door. Fresh from a tomato juice facial, I could swear he seemed to be enjoying the chaos as he wagged his tail and blew his perfume in my face.
I hauled my pungent Golden Retriever into my yellow VW Beetle convertible. We both plopped in the front seat and looked at each other, both noses breathing in the scent that had not diminished. I imagined Max flashing me that famous Golden grin and thinking the same thing I was: “polecat.” We made our 20-minute drive home in a record five minutes. When we arrived home, the smell had made its way permanently into my clothes and the upholstery of “Smiley,” my beloved VW Beetle. I suspected the smell might linger.I have always been a fast learner.
Max recovered. My car upholstery did not. As November turned to December, the skunk smell took up residence in my car’s heated seats. It seeped into my dress-for-success outfits as I drove to my destination and lingered long after I arrived. I did not have time to worry about it. I had more significant issues to tackle than my new scent. It was time to deal with THE SKUNK.
THE GREAT BLACK AND WHITE
The black and white terrorist’s reputation in the neighborhood grew. The perp was a serial sprayer. The devil honed his aim like a laser, and his nightly attacks spared no household. Neighborhood descriptions of his nefarious encounters began to approach mythical proportions. Some neighbors sighted the bold bandit long enough to capture photos of him and circulated them by the neighborhood email network to prove he was still a threat to home and hearth.
We had his profile now. He was not afraid of humans. He paraded at all hours of day and night in our yards. The skunk was a bully at his core. Neighborhood dog walkers fled in terror. I half-expected to see selfies of the skunk and his most recent victims posted on “Wanted” flyers on telephone poles in the neighborhood. Despite their best efforts, neither the city animal control nor the neighborhood vigilantes had been able to trap him.
The battle to catch the black and white terrorist began to border on neighborhood obsession. A free-range skunk in our neighborhood became a symbol of our collective powerlessness in the face of the threat from spray by “The Great Black and White.” As weeks dragged on, I sensed an escalation in the rhetoric used to refer to the skunk. I am an animal lover and a strong, proud advocate for the humane treatment of all living things. I declared our house and its boundaries a no-kill-or-harm zone as far as any trapped animals were concerned. I issued a prime directive. “No skunks can be harmed when and if captured.” The Golden Retriever and my husband grudgingly agreed to this policy. However, I suspected that secret tabletop drills were taking place in my kitchen while I was at the library researching humane skunk relocation techniques. I needed a humane skunk relocation strategy, and soon.
My Knight In Shining Armor arrived in the persona of a humane trapping expert who responded to my inquiry about his website advertisement for humane pest removal. I figured our skunk fit the pest demographic. Even the compassionate trapper expert’s arrival inspired confidence. He had all the telltale signs of being an expert in all things skunk. He pulled up in front of our house in a psychedelic yellow minivan. The entire side featured a huge, smiling beaver with an impressive set of four dazzling front teeth. At least, I think it was a beaver; it could have been some other large rodent with a terrific dental plan for all I knew. I could tell right away that we had the right man for the job. He came equipped with an assortment of humane traps and a secret weapon.
First, he demonstrated the physics and mechanics of his humane traps. He claimed even the cleverest skunks could be lured into these traps and transported to a mythical humane relocation repository. Next, my Sir Galahad of Skunks removed his stained baseball cap to wipe his brow, which I assumed was now damp because he was about to transmit critical skunk information. When he plopped the hat back on his head, I noticed the red Texas Ranger cap had a variety of stains, but I opted not to speculate on their source. He pulled up his jeans, took a deep breath, sighed, and hinted at a smile.
He said, “I have a secret way to lure them in. It never fails.”
Boy, now I was interested. “Really?
He looked like he was about to reveal the nuclear codes.
“Ding Dongs, Skunks are crazy about Ding Dongs. Place one of these babies in a trap in the the morning, and your skunk will be in the trap before the nightly news.”
I wanted to prove I was catching on.
I asked, “For future reference, will any pastry work?
My trapper must have decided that this was another one of those rhetorical questions from those “New York types that didn’t deserve an answer. He went outside, pulling a Ding Dong out of his bag that I now referred to as “The Skunk Relocation Kit.” He placed the Ding Dong deep in the trap, secured it, and set multiple traps.
WE WERE READY, LOCKED AND LOADED.
For the next six evenings, we checked the traps and baited them again each morning:
Day 1: Empty trap, no Ding Dong
Day 2: Empty trap, no Ding Dong
Day 3: Empty trap, no Ding Dong
Day 4: One possum, no Ding Dong
Day 5: One possum, no Ding Dong
Day 6: One possum, no Ding Dong
On the seventh day, I woke up inspired. I had a feeling we were going to have a breakthrough. I was right. My Sir Galahad of Skunks had moved one trap to a new area below our bathroom window. As I was rinsing off my scented herbal shampoo and after a final hair sniff test in the shower, I heard screeching. The sounds reminded me of our neighborhood romantic feral cats in the moonlight. However, even I knew it was unusual to hear those kinds of sounds in the daytime. I looked out and saw the trap rocking back and forth until it almost tipped over onto its side. I was not going out to investigate.
My heroic, on-call trapper arrived in a flash to investigate. He reported that an unusually hefty black and white cat with impressive girth had entered the trap, eaten the Ding Dong, and was too fat to back out of the trap. She was stuck and not happy about it. I knew right away that Oreo, our neighbor’s cat, had scored the Ding Dong. I empathized with Oreo. Being in the semi-hefty category myself, I understood the irresistible lure of chocolate. I, too, have found myself unable to back out of more than one ill-chosen exercise position. So Oreo returned to her family, a little wiser and fuller for the experience and with a good riddance from Max. Oreo was not the last neighborhood cat to fall victim to the lure of a Ding Dong in the skunk traps, and so, at the request of the neighborhood cat owners, our skunk trapping campaign ceased.
Financial realities also played a role in the demise of the skunk campaign. Our negotiated financial agreement with the trapper was that he would receive a fee for each animal trapped and humanely relocated, even if it was not a skunk. We owed him for services rendered for the relocation of three possums and the safe return home of some neighborhood cats, but not a single skunk. The humane skunk-trapping project lost funding, and our relationship with the trapper came to a mutually agreeable conclusion. I am sure the trapper felt he and the Ding-Dongs had been successful. I chalked it up to success since no skunks, possums, or cats had been harmed.
The neighborhood remained on high alert for a fat, clever, black-and-white polecat with anger issues and a sweet tooth. We now had an advantage-that skunk should be getting easier to spot. That black and white bad boy should sure as hell be getting fat on Ding-Dongs.
I am educated now. I know the word skunk is not just a noun. Until that night, I never knew the verb “skunked” existed. My native Texan neighbors, friends, and amused grown son were pleased to enlighten me and explain, “You got skunked.”
I GET IT NOW. SKUNKED IS AN ACTION VERB.
Throughout our great skunk odyssey, I suspect Max was silently amused by it all. I am grateful to Max for yet another life lesson from my Golden Retriever and for my journey into skunkdom. But despite my newfound skunk awareness, I wish I had not taken that journey down the stairs to open that back door at 3 am. Now before I open the patio door, like a Golden Retriever, I lift my nose in the air and take a good strong whiff. Max and I look at each other and snort as if to ask, “Pole-Cat?”
And I’m stocking up on Ding Dongs.
HE’S STILL OUT THERE
*****
Jill Lenk Schilp is a retired health care professional, animal advocate, and humane educator. She is the author of two books: Dogs in Health Care: Pioneering Animal- Human Partnerships and Dogs of the Railways: Canine Companions, and Mascots Since the 19th Century, part of the Dogs in Our World Series at McFarland and Company publishers. Her work has appeared in books, journal, magazines and blogs. A member of the Dog Writers Association of America, she is a past winner of the DWAA Maxwell award.
She lives in Texas with her current rescued Golden Retriever, Kringle. She and Kringle still sniff the air when they open their patio door in the middle of the night.
copyright, Jill Lenk Schilp 2026, all rights reserved
Jill Schilp Writes 