Had to pick between a short cut through the woods or the long way around the pond this morning

My dog Daisy was pulling me toward the woods like she knew something was up. I picked the woods because it was 6am and I was half asleep. Turned out there was a whole family of skunks having a little meeting right on the path lol. Daisy froze, I froze, we backed away real slow and took the pond route anyway. Has anyone else's dog ever led you straight into a wild animal standoff?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_emery13d ago

Dog have that sixth sense for trouble, don't they? I've had a similar thing happen with my lab mix... she got real interested in a bush one time and I figured it was a rabbit. Turned out to be a possum hissing and showing all its teeth. Best advice I can give is always carry a little whistle or something noisy when you go into the woods with them. That way if you run into something, you can make a racket and scare it off without having to yell and lose your voice. Also keep a leash handy even if you let them roam... lets you pull them back fast.

ivanross13d ago

@the_emery totally right about the whistle thing. That skunk family just wanted to go about their business and we definitely didn't want to test their spray lol.

martinez.kim12d ago

Read somewhere recently that skunks will actually give you a warning before they spray - they stomp their front feet and raise their tail. But by that point you're already too close, so the whistle trick @ivanross mentioned makes a lot of sense as a way to keep them at a distance before it gets to that. Our own dog stumbled onto a groundhog den once and that was tense enough without adding spray to the mix. Keeping a whistle clipped to my jacket pocket seems like a simple thing but could save a lot of trouble.