After having another skunk prolapse the night after Valentine's day I took my skunk to another vet to have a more in depth checkup. The vet decided to stop worming her with the Pyrantel Pamoate and changed her to Ivermectin (Note that this was not him saying that Pyrantel Pamoate is a bad wormer for skunks, it was simply because her specific parasites did not seem to be clearing so he wanted to try a different option.) Along with this, he gave Gingerbread a thorough checkup.
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So my girls are destined to not get photos with Santa. First petsmart cancelled Santa's visit. Then one that was supposed to be close got moved further away...
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Gingerbread had a prolapse tonight. About a finger and a half to two fingers long, and she was so upset about it that every time someone tried to help her she would purse her butt and push it further out. Cue my boyfriend freaking out while I get in the car with a skunk and some lube to drive an hour to the emergency vet.
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Although some people falsely believe that skunks hibernate, they do not. However, this does not mean that they do not go partially dormant (a state called torpor) once the days get shorter and night starts coming earlier. My girls have retreated to their den for long days of napping and are far less playful when they do bother to come out. After a conversation about this on the skunk forums I figured I would blog a bit about what you can and can't expect with your skunks in the wintertime.
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I recently attended the Florida Annual Skunk Show. It was not the first time I have attended the show, but it was the first time I have entered my own skunks into the show. Because a lot of the skunks that I keep are rescues, they often have little idiosyncrasies that I was worried would keep them from being able to handle the judging table. For instance, my champagne skunk gets highly stressed in crowds and will drool and pant in a way that would remove her from any sort of "best in show" running if they take appearance into account at all. I was pleasantly surprised by how well my babies did.
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Recently Stunky started piddling small puddles all over the house. We called the vet afraid that it might be a urinary tract infection or some sort of similar issue. The Vet gave us an appointment time and said "Please bring a urine sample with you."
Now, I don't know about your pets, but my skunk is not intelligent enough to understand "please go pee in this cup for the vet."
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Anyone who has small cats or dogs and spends a ton of money on Advantage II cause Florida (or anywhere else it seems) is full of fleas, per my vet, you just need these two items to save yourself a TON of money.
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Having kept skunks for awhile now you would think that I would be used to their little idiosyncrasies. However, they always seem to come up with new ways to surprise me. The most recent has been with my young black and white skunk: Stunky. She figured out that we sometimes throw food away in the garbage, and she made it her mission to knock over the garbage can daily. In times when she was unable to knock over the garbage can, she would simply climb up onto anything she could find, run across the office desk, and throw herself away. This accomplished she would wallow happily in the garbage until noticed and removed (and often bathed) by either me or my boyfriend.
It had to stop.
Initially this site was started so that I could blog about my sweet skunk babies. However, when looking for information on skunks I found that while there are a lot of websites out there, a lot of them either have outdated information or are no longer getting the upkeep that they deserve. Because of this I decided that I would also use this site to collect information about skunks to share with everyone. At that point, I dumped my old URL (steampunkskunk.com) and registered Skunk.guru instead.
There are several sections I plan on building up:
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It's thanksgiving, and we have brought home Doodle's sister. Since I named Snickerdoodles (while stuffing my face with cookies of the same name) Ken named the new baby Stunky (Pokemon what?!) and we have started getting her used to us. She seems to be decently snuggly but is less apt to approach us than Doodles was. In fact, the issue with Doodles was keeping her from bothering you when you didn't want her to. We have Stunky scheduled for a spay (oh goody) and she's got all of her shots already.
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We picked out a sweet baby just a few months after losing Phiphi, my skunk of 13 years. It had been quite a while since I had gotten a new skunk, and at the time PhiPhi was my only skunk. It was strange for me, used to as I am of living in a multiple skunk household. When PhiPhi passed it was the first time in many years that I lived in a house with no skunks. No pitter patter of feet, no clawing at the couch when I tried to eat veggies and hummus while watching TV. I didn't know if I wanted to get a new skunk, instead opting to look at adopting a Pomeranean puppy. Ken knows me so well though, he took me to a petshop with baby skunks and the rest was history. We took Snickerdoodles home that day.
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Today may have been one of the weirdest most stressful days of my life. I took my skunk to get spayed today. A normal procedure they say "drop her off in the morning... pick her up a few hours later." I dropped her off, headed to work, and got a call to pick her up. Picked her up on my lunch break and had a deal with Ken that he would stop by my work and pick up Doodles. About 10-15 mins after getting to work again Doodles started making a weird noise in her carrier.
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