Thank God My Dog Saw the Skunk Before I Did This Morning

This morning, as I do every morning, after I shower and get ready for work, I take my 9 month old golden retriever Hagar outside before I head off to work here at 99 1 The Whale. This morning was almost a disaster.

Chris and I share a driveway with our neighbors at our house in Endicott. Our neighbors resealed the driveway yesterday. So instead of taking the dog out the side door and turning on the lights on the back of our garage, I took Hagar out the back door planning to make my way over to the light switch on the garage.

We had just walked out from underneath the covered part of the patio and Hagar stopped and was staring into my other neighbors yard. I didn't see what he was looking at at first. Then, in the darkness, I saw something that I thought was an animal sitting there with its head looking up into the trees.

I made sure that I tightened Hagar's leash so he couldn't run after it. I was watching what I thought might have been a fox sitting there looking around in the backyard. Then I saw the thing move. I realized what I thought was an animal's head was actually a skunk's tail.

I didn't smell anything, but I could tell by the way it started moving forward that it was a skunk. He was probably about 45 feet away from us. So I pulled on Hagar's leash and said come on buddy, we are going back inside. As we got back to the covered part of the patio, I turned to look and saw the skunk running away from us and into the bushes in my neighbor's backyard.

I took the dog out the front door and let him pee in the front yard so we will be far away from our little visitor. Thank God he wasted not time, peed and then was ready to go right back inside.

With our neighbors resealing the driveway, I couldn't park in our driveway, carport, or the garage. I had to park on a side street next to the yard that I saw the skunk in. As I walked up to my SUV, I was walking right down the middle of the road and made sure to look underneath my car before getting inside of it.

Thankfully the skunk did not reappear and it was able to make my way into work without having to give my dog, or myself a bath in tomato juice.