My dog stinks.

We went camping Friday night. As Karen was rolling into camp, a skunk ran across the road into the cornfield.

"Fuck. Jimi! Finn's gonna get sprayed by a skunk!" I yelled to my beloved who was doing as a good man does and setting up our camp.

Several hours later, it was dark, we had a large fire ablaze, and first dinner was ready to be served. My dog was not around, which is abnormal to say the least when the smell of meat is nearby.

"Finnegan, Come!"

Here he comes, around the corn and down the road toward me, running full speed and happy as can be. But he stops to roll in the long-dead possum that's decayed and dry in the middle of the road. He runs a few more feet and stops again, though this time I know he's only rolling in dirt. Hmm, that's a bit odd. A few more feet, stop, drop, roll. Into the grass, stop, drop, roll.

And then he's in range. He's 30 feet away yet, but I can smell him. He's been skunked.

I laughed. Our fellow campers did not. Especially when he wanted to be close to them because he realized it was, in fact, supper time.

We washed him that night with tea tree oil dog shampoo that Karen had remembered to bring. (A tip for camping - if you must camp, camp with Karen. She has everything you forgot, and probably has 2 of them.) I went to bed early that night, but I woke when Jimi and the stinky dog came to bed, and immediately smelled him every time I woke for the rest of the night. He smelled bad. Up close, it was so much worse than the smell you get as you're driving past a 12-hour-dead skunk on the side of the highway at 55 MPH. The best term we came up with to describe the stink was "burning". Not that it had that pleasant smell of burning leaves or a campfire - no, not that kind of burning. I'm talking about the kind of burning that makes your nose hurt and your eyes water. The kind of burning you feel in the back of your throat.

So he got another bath the next morning. We could now see the yellowish spot where he'd been sprayed, right between his eyes. Poor puppy. After bath number 2, you guessed it, he was still pungent. But it wasn't as bad. Honest.

Yesterday, I'd convinced myself that the smell was mostly gone. Then, after coming out of the shower into the bedroom this morning, I realized our bedroom, where Finn sleeps at the foot of the bed, smelled like highway skunk. So tonight, we tried baking soda, peroxide, and soap.

He still stinks.