Does this pet owner need to have his head examined or do I?

Oh the temptation. The temptation.

It’s not clear that it would have been possible to call off the dog. It’s a rodent hunter. That’s what it does.

Perhaps the owner should have gone in and gotten between his dog and the skunk and taken the hit himself? After all, isn’t that what humans are for? To serve dogs?

I think calling off the dog would sure beat bathing the dog in tomatoe (per Dan Quayle) juice and then hoping the dog’s rabies shots will be adequate protection.

Nothing wrong with you @Mama_Cakes (in this instance ~)

Sounds like the guy is named Bubba

My guess is that the dog sleeps out on a porch or in a shed, and not in the house.

It’s a country dog, living in the country. Apparently, this was what the owner wanted – for Suzi to learn “Don’t attack the skunk.”

“I think calling off the dog would sure beat bathing the dog in tomatoe (per Dan Quayle) juice and then hoping the dog’s rabies shots will be adequate protection.”

Yup.

I expected the owner to pull out a banjo and give us a tune (much like the boy in Deliverance).

In situations like this I wish skunks’ excretions were lethal.

I’m surprised at how restrained the skunk is. It’s like the skunk is saying, “Um, you do know how this ends, right?”

Guys an idiot.

IMO not fit to own a dog.

The only thing crazy about you is the way you spell tomato. ;)

This may be a good learning experience for the dog. But the dog’s owner should have been there with a bottle of clean water or normal saline to flush the dog’s eyes out. Skunk spray can damage the eyes so a follow up visit to a veterinarian is advisable.

Too bad the guy didn’t get a face full.

I guess he was trying to teach the dog to leave skunks alone… based on my experience, even a good thorough spraying isn’t necessarily enough to deter the dog.:-0
OTOH, the peroxide/baking soda/dish soap mix works surprisingly well.

He didn’t even TRY to warn the dog off. It’s one thing to let a dog “learn its lesson,” accompanied by verbal warnings, the tone of which the dog can understand, but in this case the idiot was encouraging the dog to keep going after the skunk. He’s an idiot.

If only you guys could see how dogs are “cared for” in Central America…...

A lot of people think that pets are for companionship in this country. I think that is how they measure the way other people treat their pets. I think it is hard for people who think this way to conceive of dogs as being work animals, not pets. I think that once you have a companion pet, it seems like a human, with rights, and to make it work seems like slavery. To treat it in any other way than you would treat your child seems like abuse.

So clearly a lot of people think this guy was abusing his dog by not warning it away from the skunk. He did sort of warn the dog, but not very urgently. I think he truly believed that once the dog got sprayed, it would learn a lesson. I think people here honestly believe that is very close to abusive behavior, if not abusive behavior.

If you treated a child that way, you’d get in trouble with Child Protective Services. Well, I think most of us believe you would. I don’t know that for sure.

Based on that analogy, I think people believe that a pet is very like a child. It is for companionship. So it should be treated about the same as you treat a child. Therefore, the skunk incident is wrong. So they call the owner stupid.

I wouldn’t call the owner stupid. I think he is operating from a different idea about what pets are for. For him, the pet is a rodent killer. It has a job. He needs to train it to know which rodents to go after and which ones to leave alone.

I think part of the problem was his attitude on the tape. He was clearly amused and that is a bullying and cruel attitude. At least, it is when we apply it to children. I don’t know for sure it is when applied to pets. Or dogs. Working dogs. They need leadership. The way most people treat companion dogs, the dog gets the idea that it leads the pack. From what I understand, that is not doing the dog any favors.

This guy was being the leader of the pack for his dog. Who knows if the dog understands his words or demeanor the way we do. I think the guy loved his dog and respected it, even if he was teasing it. It’s a dog. Not a child. It does not speak a language. Humans regularly call dogs awful names in a nice tone of voice. The dog is happy at the attention and the human gets his yayahs out. Win win.

I don’t think the guy was stupid. I don’t think he was cruel. I think he has a very different notion of what a dog is for. I think people here are mostly operating from a different paradigm about pets. I don’t know if you should try to understand other ways of looking at things or not. I mean, this is just a website for people to sound off in. But I would hope that people try to understand where behavior they think is ridiculous is coming from. Once you understand it, then go ahead and condemn it. But condemning things without understanding them seems pointless to me. It’s just rah rah aren’t we beautiful cheerleading behavior. If it isn’t obvious by now, I’ve never been much on cheer leading.

I’m not sure where the idea came from that the guy was trying to “teach the dog a lesson.” I didn’t get that from the video at all. In fact, it looked like a well groomed “city” dog, not a working dog.
From the video I just got the impression that he was setting the dog up for a funny “joke,” at the dogs expense.

It is just a dog, not a cat.

@Dutchess_III I read the comments about the video. The owner mentions that in one of his comments.

Guess I need to re-listen. The overall impression I got wasn’t one of “I’m warning you!” It was more like teasing. I’m not adverse to letting a dog (or a kid) “learn his lesson.” I’d just have a different attitude about going about it.

Check out that skunk, he’s like, you just bring it man, bring it.

Seriously though…I denno why he wouldn’t call off the dog. Wanted to make YT vid, or he thought it was funny…you’d have to ask that guy. But indeed, I would have called the dog off. As already mentioned, to avoid something like rabies and whatever other nasty business some wild animals can carry. And cuz I wouldn’t want my poor dog sprayed or attacked? Guess she must have learned her lesson though…I find it pretty lame that the guy laughs about it.

@Dutchess_III No. Not re-listen. Read through the comments under the video.

K. Read the comments. The dog’s a killer of other animals for mostly no reason, that I can tell. The owner got a good joke off on the dog for that one, huh. And a ½ acre does not a forest, country, or working-dog make. Rednecks.

@Dutchess_III Some people hunt small game. A dog that would help with that would be an asset.
Dog antics are funny, which is why the guy laughed.

@wundayatta I agree with you well adjusted dogs have jobs. If we don;t assign them one, they typically choose a job that they fulfill unfailingly. My older dog proudly holds the floor down! The younger one guards us from prowling neighbourhood cats!

Dan Quayle misspelled potato, not tomato.

I have a dog who was starved as a pup therefore she looks upon small furry/feathered creatures as lunch. I am aware of this and am on guard to protect her from herself and her natural inclinations because I don’t want her to kill anyone’s pet or have a law suit against her or me because she killed a pet.

I think this guy is a bit sadistic, if he wanted to get rid of the baby skunk, he should have shot it. If that was not the plan, what he did was cruel to the baby skunk and the dog.

I do allow my dog to kill mice. I don’t really like it, but it is natural and she dispatches them so quickly it is much preferable to trapping them.

@Dr_Lawrence Our dog Carina decided that she was my sister’s guard and nursemaid. When she was sick, or wasn’t when home when expected, or was upset, the dog would go and get Mom and, circumstantially, ‘explain’ the situation. Of course Mom would already know these things and would tell Carina not to worry, but it was awfully nice anyway.

FYI If your dog tangles with any wild animal a rabies booster is reccommended immediately, even if they are current on their shots.

My guess is this is the type of pet owner who doesn’t take his/her animals to a vet regularly or else they’d know it’s no fun and not cheap to get rabies ruled out if the skunk had nipped to puncture or tear skin.