When our daughter MariLouise was about ten years old, her Aunt Mari Lou decreed that her namesake should have a dog of her own: “Every child needs a dog!” At that point MariLouise didn’t have a little sister to dote on, and it was argued that having a dog would provide welcome companionship. Having to care for an animal—seeing that it was fed daily, taken for walks, and properly groomed—would teach the child responsibility. Seeing that I was outnumbered three-to-one (Aunt Mari Lou, my wife, and my daughter against me) and that Aunt Mari Lou had offered to pay for the animal, I engaged in a delay tactic by suggesting that we take the time to research thoroughly various breeds of small dogs. Given the cold Utah winters, I accepted as a fact that we were looking for an indoor dog. The thought of having a house dog that shed hair proved unpleasant enough that everyone agreed that it was best to conduct a search for a dog that did not shed. We checked books out of the Provo Public Library and reviewed various possibilities, from the bichon frisé to the Maltese to the Yorkshire terrier. I had grown up around poodles and suggested that breed as a possibility, even though the cost of grooming could be expensive. MariLouise, who was to be the primary caregiver of the dog, finally settled on a miniature schnauzer. Norma Rohde, our friend and neighbor, owned one, and we all enjoyed interacting with her pooch when we visited Norma. We were referred to a seller in a neighboring town, where we found a litter of silver-gray puppies that were cute as buttons. MariLouise chose a small female, and we named her Mitzi.
It didn’t take long for Mitzi to become a beloved member of our family. Although MariLouise was the dog’s designated caregiver, each of us soon delighted in taking Mitzi on walks, making sure she had food and water, playing with her, rewarding her with treats, and brushing and petting her. She struggled mightily to learn obedience, and we were obliged to take her to a dog obedience school. That experience ended with somewhat mixed results: we humans learned the commands to sit, stay, come, jump, shake, and roll over; however, Mitzi was easily distracted and often had trouble realizing that the commands were intended for her.
At night Mitzi slept on MariLouise’s bed. But when MariLouise arose early to go to school, the dog would leap onto my bed and in the winter months scoot under the covers and snuggle next to me. She would also seek me late at night if she wanted to be let out. And so it happened one night when Mitzi was about six years old that she came to me enthusiastically wagging her short tail and begging to go outside. Everyone else was fast asleep, so I let her out the back door, presumably to do her business. I watched her shoot off the porch and down the stairs into the pitch-black darkness. She seemed over-anxious, and I wondered if she sensed a deer or a covey of quail. I waited and waited inside the house for her to return so that I could let her back in. I opened the door periodically and called out her name, but to no avail. Where had that little dog gone? Just as I was about to retrieve my robe and a flashlight and go looking for her, she pawed at the door and barked. As I opened it to reprimand her for taking so long, the unmistakable stench of skunk spray offended my nostrils. Mitzi had chased a skunk and been sprayed. Although the dog seemed quite pleased with herself, the smell was nauseating. I knew that I couldn’t let her run through the house and jump onto MariLouise’s bed.
What was I to do? It was nearly midnight. I remembered (the old wives’ tale) that tomato juice was the best remedy for treating skunk spray. We didn’t have any tomato juice, but we had what I considered the next best thing: thick, red tomato ketchup. I grabbed Mitzi with my left hand and held her firmly under my arm while I grabbed a large bottle of Heinz ketchup with my free hand. I quietly slipped into our master bathroom and placed the dog in our bathtub, where first I washed her with shampoo and warm water. (In case you don’t know, skunk spray, as I quickly discovered, only gets worse when it is wet.) Not only did the shampooing not lessen the pungent smell of skunk, Mitzi now started to shake the water off her thick coat. My pajamas were getting wet, and I knew that the treatment with ketchup would result in their getting stained. I did the only thing I could think of: I stripped naked and got into the tub with the dog and the bottle of ketchup. Leaning over the animal, I applied ketchup liberally and, while massaging the blood-red liquid into her coat, tried my best to hold the increasingly slippery dog down so that she didn’t jump out of the tub and shake the ketchup on the carpet and walls.
As I muttered one-word commands to “sit” and “stay” to little avail, the sound of my muttering and the dog’s occasional yelps awakened my wife. Half asleep, she rolled out of bed and plodded towards the source of the noise: our bathroom. Opening the door without knocking, she gasped at what she witnessed or thought she was witnessing: a naked man splattered with blood slaughtering the beloved family pet in the bathtub. Now fully awake, she yelled, “What’s going on?” I looked up, met her wide eyes, and responded, “It’s ketchup, not blood! Mitzi got sprayed by a skunk!” My wife rolled her eyes, shook her head at my predicament, and retreated to bed. Meanwhile I was left with a still-stinking dog, a mess to clean up, and the thought that whoever said “every child needs a dog” didn’t know what skunk spray smelled like.
Carol Burnett reportedly said, “comedy is tragedy plus time”—meaning that, given time for pain or discomfort to subside, dreadful experiences can often lead to humorous recollections. In the case of Mitzi and the skunk, I know that is true. Furthermore, in one of life’s great ironies, when Mitzi succumbed to canine cancer a couple of years after the ordeal by ketchup, we all cried—no one more than I—over the loss of a loyal and beloved member of the family.
The Many Worlds of Madison Sowell 