Back in the '60s my horse and I, on a trail ride, were sprayed by a skunk.
I got the smell out of me and my clothes with a couple of baths, and a couple of runs through the washing machine.
The horse stopped smelling after 3 or 4 baths.
But it took MONTHS to get the smell out of the saddle.
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I hope you petted one that was not yet equipped to spray you!
I have to admit, I like skunks. I hated that my last dog just could not learn to avoid chasing the striped critters, but I didn’t mind them living under my hay. I warned them when I was coming in, and never got sprayed.
Rebecca
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Nope.
This was a grown-up skunk & it was totally nonplussed when I patted it on the head 
My theory is they know what they got & are conservative using it 
Hence the stomping before they turn & let fly 
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I’m old enough that I still call it pot!
It’s legal here and you always want to avoid the right hand lane that people turn from, to enter the pot store parking lot.
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Oh @Janet that must have been horrible. Your poor saddle!
@skydy Define “old enough” I am in my late 40’s and I call it pot. Skunk weed is the crappy, cheap stuff we could afford as teenagers in the early 90’s. 
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Where I lived it was called “ditch weed” but we were not connoisseurs and we still called it pot. 
I seem to be in the minority now, everyone seems to refer to it as “weed”.
It really smells like skunk now, the high quality stuff people get from the pot shop.
I went to the pot store once with my friend who has a medical card (that’s not necessary now.)
It was fascinating. There is a waiting room with couches where you sit until it’s your turn to go in.
When it’s your turn, you go in the room that has the pot and there is no one else in there but you (and whomever is with you) and the clerk. There are large glass cases (think jewelry cases) full of every form of pot you could imagine. Some for sleep, some for pain etc… and many many different types of edibles. There was pot in containers on the shelves lining the walls.
I had no idea there was such variety.
Anyway, it was an interesting experience, though I wasn’t tempted to try. My experimentation days are over.
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I’m old enough to remember when a Nickel Bag of marijuana actually cost $5
& Contained enough product for at least a handful of joints!
DH & I were regular users & I held responsible, good-paying jobs as an everyday smoker.
He owned his own Locksmith business.
But my days of daily use are long gone.
When I first moved away from my sources, friends would give me the occasional joint, or edible (then homemade). I’d smoke with them when I visited.
But it’s been probably 10yrs & last time I ate the teeniest piece of a gifted cookie 
My tolerance - physical, not judgemental - is now less than zero.
This month, at County Fair, I was relaxing with a friend at the luxe RV she parks on the grounds, when a small group of 20-somethings asked us for a lighter.
When we gave them one, they immediately lit up. Surprising, as neither medicinal, let alone recreational use are legal in my state.
Maybe they thought we Antiques wouldn’t know what was in the pipe 
The smell was unmistakable, but a lot more pungent than I recalled.
Another example of When I was your age! ? 
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I agree that today’s pot smells very skunky. When Colorado first legalized it, I thought it would help get rid of my RA pain, so I tried it. Nope. And I reacted too much to a small dose of edible. So I decided it’s not for me. It’s too bad, because I was a major pothead in my teens and 20s. It would be nice to use it without fear of legal problems, but it just doesn’t do much for me these days.
It’s funny, I hardly ever smell it where I live now, in spite of it being legal here in Colorado. When I lived in South Carolina, I would smell it when biking past various houses in my subdivision. SC is very harsh on pot users, and I doubt they’ll ever legalize even medicinal pot.
On the 16th Street Mall in Denver (closed section of road with restaurants, entertainment and stuff), you could always smell it!
Rebecca
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Yes it does. It used to smell like burning rope, now you look around to see if there’s a squashed skunk.
Evern worse, someone up the street was out in their garage smoking enough that I was thinking there was a dead skunk, they jumped up from the chair where they were smoking, climbed in their car, and zoomed off. It is the barely out of high school son of the homeowner, and I hope he didn’t nail someone driving stoned. The homeowner’s mother does the same thing, and she’s the babysitter for the grandbaby too.
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Yikes!
Rebecca
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So pretty! We have ones with the same stripe pattern here. The last place I lived was a slightly different pattern.
As long as they aren’t upset at you(g), they are sweet and cute.
High-drive dog got skunked by our backyard skunk family – THREE TIMES. Flat learning curve.
I keep skunk deodorizer, the commercial animal kind, at the front of the storage shelf. No fooling around with tomato juice and other natural remedies. De-skunking is always an emergency, for me, anyway.
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Decades ago my father’s (white) Samoyed was sprayed by a skunk. He had heard about using ketchup to get rid of the stink, and bought cheap ketchup from the supermarket. Unfortunately the “red” was mostly food coloring, not tomato.
He ended up with a pink smelly dog.
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While I was waiting for a new job to start (after current fiscal year ended) I took a part time job as a small animal vet office receptionist.
In the short time I was there, a lab came in FOUR times to have porcupine quills removed. You’d think he would have learned after the first few encounters.
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I learned that my next dog (if there is one) needs to not have so much drive.
The “GO !!!” button gets smashed before the thinking brain even knows something is happening. 
I’m not sure if having even a beat before “GO” can be trained, or if this instant high-adrenaline rush is so genetically hardwired that it can’t be untrained.
Even if they ‘learn’, for learning to be invoked, there has to be a less-immediate “GO” reaction, even if it is by only a part of a second. My dog did not have that instant for thought, before he reacted.
A long time ago I read something about how the so-called ‘blink’ reaction, that correctly assesses a situation almost instantly, has a micro-second for situational analysis. That’s all the brain needs for expert learning to pour in.
The high-drive dogs don’t seem to have that micro-second. But I haven’t studied that further.
Anyway … I never went far enough into the rabbit hole to tamp down my dog’s impulsiveness, but I did get that far into learning about it. 
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This is one of the things I’ve always appreciated about my horses – that split second.
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Okay, I know this is a crappy picture. I just did a screen shot from video. This little guy was in the paddock the other day. At first, I thought it was a cat, because all I saw was this fluffy white tail. Then he lifted his head (he or she, not sure!) and I realized it was a skunk. I have never seen one so light with that fluffy white tail. Actually quite pretty. I still don’t want it in my paddock, though!
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Anyone who has skunks around will want to get a rabies shot for themselves and all their livestock, horses, cats, dogs, and keep the shots updated as they expire.
Locally our Vet friends and assistants are all rabies vaccinated for “just in case” situations that may arise. One Vet would get one to several horse rabies cases a year. Horse usually got bit by a skunk looking for dropped sweet feed when horse took offense. And you don’t know horse suddenly acting weird is rabies until AFTER you handle the animal! Slobber can pass rabies on if it gets into cut skin. One preventative rabies shot versus taking the whole series after exposure, in the stomach area to get cured, would make a prevention shot an easy choice for me!!
The one barn cat here is locked in and fed in the tack room at night, which protects her food and cat from predators. We don’t use sweet feed, no temptation from plain oats and cracked corn. Barn doors are closed at night, we don’t want wandering wildlife to move into the hay stacks.
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We live in the back of beyond and have all sorts of wildlife that visits our little farm: bobcats, black bears, racoons, opossums, muskrat, alligator snapping turtles, coy-wolves, and at one point, a cougar. I was never too thrilled about the occasional visits of “Mr. Stinky” as we call all our skunks, until I learned that they’ve been digging up our yellow jacket nests at night for a late supper. I am now very happy to host a skunk party every now and then. 
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if you live in a rabies heavy area that should be part of the regiment anyhow!
Skunk or not. There is so much on the move at night, we just tell ourselves the nights are calm and peaceful!
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The most terrifying book I have ever read, by far, is “Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus”.
IMO, covid and ebola are nothing compared to rabies.
It infects the brain, and if it becomes well rooted there, it’s 100% fatal, with a long hard death. It can infect many species, wild & domestic, and readily passes to humans.
It can turn a victim into a raging monster who infects the next victim, who can then pass it on in turn. Reflecting supernatural horror stories where vampires make more vampires (by a bite), and the walking dead make more walking dead.
Vaccinations have helped control rabies. But with less exposure, many humans seem to know a lot less about it.
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