Why does tomato juice get rid of skunk smell?

This past week my dog decided to play with a skunk.  I brought him in Wednesday night and he smelled bad, but I convinced myself he was fine, and I was just crazy.

The next morning it was clear I was not crazy.  He smelled horrible.

I knew you’re supposed to use tomato juice to wash him off, but I didn’t have any.  So I used some shampoo.  That didn’t work.

I put a quick facebook post up, asking for advice, and got some great suggestions.  I also asked the ladies at my women’s Bible study about how to deal with this.

Both Facebook and my women’s Bible study agreed: get thee to a grocery store and buy some tomato juice.

Why does tomato juice get rid of the skunk smell?

We had a long discussion about it at the Bible study and our leader swore because of the acidity of tomato juice, and then we started wondering if orange juice would work as well and on and and on and on.

But you know, what?

Tomato juice didn’t work.  Our dog still smells, he’s slightly better, but the tomato juice didn’t work.

Mainly because it’s been raining, and getting wet causes the smell to come back, for a very long explanation of that, I’ll refer you to the article I’ve been poring over for the last several minutes.

My new plan (to enact tomorrow): Baking Soda (affiliate link and yes I have bought that big of a bag before, it’s handy stuff, I also have a rather funny story about college and baking soda and carrying boxes of it around downtown Dallas) and Dawn Dish soap (also affiliate link, and another funny college story I had 2 roommates flood my apartment putting this in the dishwasher, you can sweep up suds).

So lesson learned tomato juice does not get rid of skunk smell.

In theory the baking soda well because it will cause the chemicals causing the smell to oxygenate, and a bunch more complicated information.  I’ll update the post with our results later.

UPDATE: Baking Soda, Dish soap, and vinegar attempt to get rid of skunk smell.

I finally found baking soda and vinegar, and used half of our remaining dish soap, because the claim was “Dawn soap will work.”

Well, first my dog scratched my legs up because he was thinking, “No way am I getting another bath in 3 days.  That makes THREE.”  After I’d finally convinced him to get in the bathtub I covered him in baking soda.

Then I realized I really should have gotten him wet first, so the dish soap would spread further.  Almost a cup of dish soap later, I started pouring the vinegar on him.  He made for an impressive fizzing mess, and almost jumped out of the bathtub when it happened.

I caught him in time and proceeded to pour large amounts of vinegar on him, and then finish rinsing him with water once I ran out of vinegar.

Then he ran away, rubbed all over every piece of furniture in the house to object to the bath, and hid from me all night long.

The next morning he still smelled.  Horrid.  We tried calling the groomers, but they don’t have a special skunk shampoo.  Poor guy’s gonna smell for a while.