This homemade skunk smell remover recipe is an easy way to make to remove skunk odor and it really works! It uses common ingredients all of us have on hand!
Homemade Skunk Smell Remover…that REALLY works!!!!
When I say we have included almost every kind of recipe in the Dining on a Dime Cookbook, I’m not joking! We’ve even included a really good and easy homemade skunk smell remover recipe, which actually works. It’s amazing how easily dogs get into mischief and get sprayed by a skunk. Maybe someone in your family stumbled across a skunk and now you want to remove the skunk odor. This recipe will definitely do the trick!
I thought with summer here and with many of us spending more and more time outside some of you might end up needing a good skunk smell remover! It might even be wise to take the ingredients with you on your picnics or camping trips, although these are basic ingredients and you may have them with you anyway.
My neighbor has a cabin by a lake and had to use this recipe about four times last year alone when a skunk made a nest under her porch. Each time she uses this homemade skunk smell remover she gets excited and calls me to let me know how great it worked once again. We hear people say over and over again how great this recipe and that it REALLY works!
Just for the record, things like tomato juice, vinegar, spraying with lemon, citrus, perfume or Febreze almost never work as skunk smell removers. If you don’t want to use the peroxide recipe you can soak down the person or animal with vinegar and dishsoap but this doesn’t work nearly as well as the skunk odor remover and honestly who wants to smell that skunk stink for days on end!
PrintHomemade Skunk Smell Remover Recipe
This homemade skunk smell remover is an easy recipe to make to remove skunk odor and it really works! It uses common ingredients all of us have on hand!
Ingredients
1 quart hydrogen peroxide
1/4 cup baking soda
1 tsp. dish detergent
Instructions
- When ready to use, mix all ingredients.
- Sponge onto the affected area and let dry.
- This skunk smell remover recipe is safe for use on cats and dogs.
- If you need to double or triple this recipe you can easily do it.
- Do not use on clothes.
This skunk smell remover recipe is from Volume 1 of our cookbook:
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Thanks for this! Our Irish Settle Ginger got sprayed and everytime one of us came home that day we gave her a bath. Poor der got 4 baths that day and still stank! Regular baths don’t remove skunk. You need something with acid like tomato juice or this recipe.
Tomato juice is a myth. It does nothing on a chemical level to remove odors.
Says to let it dry. Shouldn’t it be washed out of fur? I can understand letting it work for 5 minutes or so but not to leave it. My Kangal has a double coat. She got sprayed but not too bad this year. It’s too cold to bathe her outside and I don’t have a place to bring here in for a bath.
No Judy you do need to let it dry. This stuff really does work though.
This really does work , thank you !!!!!
So glad it worked for you Peyton. We had a dog that got sprayed a couple of times and it was awful and was so glad to find this recipe.
Yep, you’re right, it is a myth
The formula of H2O2, baking soda and I use Dawn dish soap because it cuts grease the best and skunk spray is an oily substance which comes from its glands by the anus, so you need something to cut the crease and Dawn does it best.
I shampooed my dog first to get majority of the odor off first, then applied the solution and let it dry before I tackled it again. But it got most of it off so I was able to tolerate my dog in the house with no problem. And after the second application later in the day, she was back on the bed with me that night.
We used this on our dog 2 summers ago (at lease 3 times). It really works great!!! Nothing else we used work as good as this recipe does. Always keep the stuff on hand.
Thank you so much. Our dogs found a skunk a couple of months of go and the vet was sold out of skunk smell remover so we ended up having to take them to a groomers (200.00 later) :( Here is hoping we don’t have to use it!!
This works the best for the smell your going to still have a light faint smell of skunk but not horrible like using other items to wash this works the best because skunk smell is the hardest smell to get off a dog not sure if I would recommend using on cat I would take cat to vet for smell removal because there systems are different than dogs
I have used this a number of times on my feisty little yorkie. Works like a charm! However, make sure you do not get it in their eyes…..it works by a chemical reaction of the ingredients and will severly burn their eyes. “Quincy” was left with a faint smell on his face, but other than that it totally removed the smell………..he even slept with me that night because it removed it so well.
Does it remove other odors? Such as puppy pee pee?
I’m not sure.
yes it does work to get rid of puppy pee pee. my used it to get rid of dog urine, coffee stain, juice stain, soda stain and many other stains on her white carpet. just saturate the stain and let it dry. then vaccume the area where you put it.
Did not work. I must have a special kind of skunk. We did this right away and nunerous times after it did nothing
Hum we have had so many use it and we have used it too with success so not sure what happened Nicole.
How long after using this and it dries should I wait to give my skunky golden retriever a real bath?
I would just give it an hour or 2 after it dries or if you put it on in the evening just leave it over night. It really have done it’s job by the time it dries though.
You have to use right after mixing, which is one of the reasons they don’t bottle it and sell it in stores. (The other reason is cos the chemist who came up with it thought everyone should be able to access it.)
It does. I’ve used the solution on carpet and it worked great.
This recipe works great! We had to use it on our German Shepherd a couple of summers ago. She also got in to our breezeway area after being sprayed by the skunk and the smell was horrible. Used this recipe to wash down the walls and the smell was gone! Hope we never have to use it again but at least we know what to do now! :)
I need some help here. We’re in crisis mode because the dog just got sprayed. We saw this recipe but what it doesn’t say is do you wet them with water first? Says to let them dry but then do you rinse it out?
You just sponge it on and let it dry no rinsing or wetting.
Can you just pour it over them, I don’t own a sponge? 😅
You could but you could also just use a rag or a wash cloth might be easier. You wouldn’t use and waste as much.
Yes. It does work VERY well. Our dog loves to track animals, especially skunks!! We have used this “recipe” many many times. There usually still is a faint skunky smell but nothing like before we treat him. Also, I have found that Dawn dish soap works the best!
Yes, Dawn is the best. Whenever there are oil spills, it’s what is used to remove the oil. Skunk spray is oily, which is why it is so hard to get rid of the smell.
Wished I would have had this recipes years ago. We had a golden retriever who loved his skunks. Unfortunely, they didn’t love him. No matter how much we paid for remover…he still smelled everytime he got wet. If any of you have had a retriever you know that was often ! Thank you so much for this information.
I was told once by a friend to brew coffee and wash the dog in that after it cooled. When one of my dogs did get into a skunk, we did that and it did help. It also helps get rid of the smell in the air and on the furniture when the dog rushes in and wipes their face on the couch to get the smell off of them. Experience.
We were camped at Ft. Davis, in West Texas.
I fed our dog and went in to put on the coffee, so we could sit out and watch the stars in the clear sky…away from lights.
I heard a commotion….utho..
She had not eaten quite all of her food, and a skunk came up…trying to finish it..She chased it…and ..yep, got sprayed.
My husband poured a liter of coke over her, rubbed it in… Then, rinsed her with water and toweled dried her. He covered her, and put her in the camper for the night.
She did not smell, except when she exhaled, for several weeks…Poor dog…
When our dog got sprayed he continued to chase after the skunk. It was early in the morning, about 6am, so it was still dark, but I could hear our dog rustling in the leaves and “snorting” (I think he got sprayed in the face). He was SO stubborn and would not come back at first. Then he realized he was being bad; I probably woke up the whole neighborhood screaming at him. LOL!
Our dear departed dog Sadie got sprayed by a skunk a few years ago and it was not a good experience for either her or us! Now we have Mia and since it is spring we need to be prepared just in case. We found that Dawn dishwashing detergent works the best out of any other dishwashing liquid and hydrogen peroxide and baking soda worked well in tandem with them. Keep them on hand but separately don’t mix this up ahead of time!
Marcia,
I also use Dawn dish detergent, specifically, because it is what is used to clean birds and animals in an oil spill. Also, our our vet recommended it as well. If you have dogs these three ingredients should be readily handy!
Our dog had an encounter with a skunk early one morning late last summer; I ended up having to stay home from work because I wouldn’t let him in the house. I cleaned him several times and had to go to the grocery store to get more hydrogen peroxide. I probably didn’t need to clean him so many times, but I just wanted to be sure.
I’m so glad we don’t have these creatures in England. :)
You learn something new every day. I didn’t know you didn’t have skunks in England. Boy I bet our first colonists had the shock of their lives when they ran into one when they first landed here. :)
this recipe also works really well on stains. my mom sprayed a generouse amount on a stain on her carpet from coffee and dog urine and it lifted the stain almost emediately.
A couple of months ago I moved to a more rural area here in SoCal. Our back yard is frequented by possums, and by skunks. My big German Shepherd dog takes exception to their incursions and makes it a point to tell them so. The possums wisely make for the nearest fence when the door to the back yard is opened after dark. The skunks, of course, fire a salvo at my dog before waddling away. The big problem is they may have a den under the shed in the lower half of the back yard; at any rate, skunks are regular visitors to this neighborhood and the local pet groomers make a decent living off of the owners of skunked dogs. Last night my dog had, yet another, close encounter of the stinky kind, so today I Googled for “homemade skunk odor remover” and I found your recipe. I only had a pint of hydrogen peroxide on hand, so I made up 1/2 the recipe, which was plenty because the skunk spray generally gets my dug more strongly around the face, top of his head and neck, and the top of his back only gets misted with “Parfum Puant.” Even before I finished sponging the concoction onto my dogs face and top of his head, the odor began to dissipate! I just checked him to see how if his fur has dried and, aside from missing the inside of one ear, this recipe effectively negated the skunk spray. I am not easily impressed, but this recipe impresses me! So grateful you shared it and I’m going to pass it along to my friends and family. Thank you!!
So glad it worked for you. So many are shocked that it works because they have tried so many things that haven’t. This is one homemade recipe that actually works – thank goodness. : )
Can anyone make recommendations for how to rid the grass of the skunk spray? Every time we let Broc out it smells as though he goes right back to that spot and rolls in it. We’ve had a couple days of hard rain and still!!!!! ANYTHING WOULD BE APPRECIATED
You could try maybe making this skunk smell remover and spraying it on the grass. Be sure to do it at a time when it wasn’t going to rain for at least a day. I know this stuff works really good on dogs and clothing so it might work for grass.
P.S. I forgot to ask, what do you do once the skunk odor removing solution is dry? Should it be rinsed off with water, should the dog be shampooed, or should the dry residue be vacuumed from the dog’s fur? Please advise what the follow-up should be – it would be very helpful to have this information! Thanks again!
No you don’t rinse it off or any thing. Usually they run around rubbing on the ground like the do sometimes when they are wet so I can’t help but think that helps with getting rid of the smell and all too so don’t rinse. Don’t need to vacuum either.
So cats have to be washed afterwards to take off the solution.
Yes it is best to wash them afterwards.
This mixture totally worked. BUT I sponged it on my black dog and let it dry on a sunny day…and it changed the color of her fur!!!! Yikes! :)
The smell is gone AND she has new highlights. Win win.
That makes sense Jen that it would do that. I don’t know if it still is but hair color use to be used to be made with peroxide or girls would put that and other stuff on their hair and go sit in the sun to get highlights in their hair. My granddaughter has been doing this on her hair all summer long this year to get highlights.
If you don’t want them to have highlights don’t leave them in the sun for too long and rinse them off as soon as they dry. I like Jen wouldn’t worry too much about it.
I love your website, “Living on a Dime”. It is wonderful!! This skunk remedy works brilliantly. Please credit the inventor of the skunk remedy. His name is Paul Krebaum, a chemist from Illinois, who first published the remedy in 1993. If you want to read the story of how he invented it, go to home.earthlink.net/~skunkremedy/home/ It is such a wonderful solution for that horrendous smell, that I think he deserves to be credited. Thanks so much.
We always try to give credit for recipes when we can but with so much flying around the internet now it is almost impossible to always do that. I don’t know how many recipes and things I have read that people take credit for something and I know that that recipe had been around before they were even born or I will get a book out from the early 1900’s and find the same recipe in there. We could spend weeks just researching a recipe and then probably wouldn’t be sure about it. Thank goodness there are no copy right laws for recipes because they too know it would be impossible to give credit to the right person.
So if we know proof positive someone did something we will give credit but otherwise it really is very hard to do because you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.
My husband walks our standard poodle every night, this night, he ran in the door yelling Lolly just got sprayed by a skunk! She was shaking, tearing, and foaming at the mouth. We called our vet. they told us the recipie. I got her in the shower and repeated shampooed her many times. It got the oil out but not the smell out. Got her to the groomer the next day they used something else. Because she is black the peroxide bleached her fur. It took a few months to grow out. At night we were so happy to have this recipie!
If you get skunk spray on your clothes, just put the quart of hydrogen peroxide and a box of baking soda in your washer with regular detergent, fill it with water and wash clothes. Works well. My husband caught a skunk in a live trap, that was meant to catch a groundhog! Anyway, he shot the skunk (not smart, because they immediately release their spray), approached the trapped skunk with a tarp. He draped the tarp over the trap, picked it up by the handle on top, and walked it over to the middle of a vacant field across from us and dumped it. The odor clung to his clothes, even though he didn’t get sprayed. So he stripped in the garage and hosed himself down. I washed his clothes and they came out odor free. Although the odor stayed in the air outside for another day or two. YUK!
While no one likes the smell of the skunks spray they are quite beneficial to the environment. I help feed a feral cat community and the skins love to finish what the cats may have left for later. I researched what skunks eat – hoping to lure them away from my back yard area, and found they eat a lot of things we don’t want in our backyards. Things like voles and little mic and ants and spiders. They are quite docile if you stay calm and don’t frighten them.
However, that being said, I am quite glad to have this smell remover recipe. As fogs will be dogs and will chase anything they can there will always be the need for this recipe.
Thank you for this and for all those who’ve shared their takes on this and for the laundry.
after ‘feral community’ it should be ‘skunks’ not ‘skins’
my daughter-in-law said she tried this recipe with her German shepherd/labrador mixed and it never worked she bought some enzyme stuff will have to check the name I have a feeling she did not follow recipe exactly because she’s a bit indifferent to people’s opinion plus with everyone here saying it worked i have to take exception to her sole comment
She may not have done something quite right because this is one recipe that everyone has tried and have so excited because it really worked and in some cases they used it more than once.
a skunk sprayed under our home last night do pour this recipe all over the ground we can hardly stand it. thanks
I don’t know why you couldn’t Helen. I think it would be worth a try and since it works so good on dogs I would think it would neutralize the smell on anything
How do i apply this mixture, and will it harm my plants around the area?
Myra this is not really to put on your plants but you just rub it on your pet if they get sprayed by a skunk. Just rub it on with your hands or you could use rubber gloves it you think you need to.
Hello, Ur skunk smell remover is something that I really don’t want to ever have to use. My problem is what can I use to be proactive. I want and need something to deter them all together. And yes I will be using Ur knowledge that U’ve already obtained. Thank U
That I am not sure of Thomas. I think you can use things like rags soaked in ammonia, sonic sound things and you need to make sure there are no openings around your house for them to crawl under porches and things like that. You may just have to google it because I really don’t know for sure.
You can toss mothballs into the areas the skunks like. I also think you could try planting mont around those areas as most rodents hate smell of peppermint. Worth a try and is non-toxic.
Amber 4 am on 9-10-18 got sprayed this morning and i live in Etna ca. these skunks are powerful and really stenched, i used tomato sauce negitive … use your methode its helps but still smells
You may have to do it 2-3 times if it is really really bad
From a professional carpet cleaner I would always recommend testing any kind of products homemade or store-bought no matter what fabric in an inconspicuous area as hydrogen peroxide has the ability to brighten and whiten. I think that if you get this mixture onto you can possibly bleach fur. I have a brindle dog and it really helped get the smell out but I gave her a bath and I rinsed it off.
It really does work, my Rottweiler got sprayed by a skunk and she had a litter of puppies, she couldn’t leave them so I used this recipe. love it , putting it in my book?
I went with equal parts but didn’t let it dry…it was too cold out….still pretty stinky.
I think part of the secret of it working is letting it dry on them. It seems to make a difference for some reason. Plus you might not do the equal parts next time and use the measurements given. That can sometimes make a difference even in a recipe like this.
we just bought a vacation home up in the mountains, we noticed that there was a strong flowery pungent smell in the house, come to find out the people who were watching over the place were masking the smell with airwick smellers plugged into the wall outlet, once I removed the airwick oder masker the smell of SKUNK came thru. Found out that a skunk had gotten under the house and made his way into the Heater air vent duct. I had a professional HVAC contractor come in and clean the air vent ducts and had a professional carpet cleaner come in and cleaned and deoderized the rungs but the smell is still prevelent. Patched the hole where he got under the house and the air duct vent BUT the smell is still prevelant. HELP!! spent over 800.00 already. trying to get rid of the smell.
The only thing I can think of is to mix up some of this skunk remover and spray it and wipe it on any of the surfaces you can and see if that helps. Now skunk smell should eventually go away on it’s own after about 3 wks – maybe a month. It the smell doesn’t go away it may be something else.
Look for any drains that need to be capped off or any that are not used very often. A dry drain can cause a funky smell that is sometimes “skunky”. Smells make me crazy!
Would this work on cat pee smell too?!
I am not sure it would Julie but it isn’t that hard to mix up so you might try it. Just do a test spot though because peroxide can ever so slightly bleach the color out of some things.
I have tried everything besides the peroxide and the baking soda with the dawn! So I let let this solution dry on my dog without rinsing correct?It is soaked onto my couch the smell is how do I get this out?
Yes you just leave it on your dog to dry and forget about it. I think you are asking how to get the smell out of your couch. That I am not sure what to tell you on. The thing is the baking soda and dawn probably wouldn’t hurt for you to use on the couch but the peroxide can some times lighten dark fabrics that is why you don’t want to put this on clothes. You could try a test spot on a small spot on the couch that is not easily seen and see what it does but that is totally up to you. Also you need to use all 3 ingredients together in this or it doesn’t work.
YES!!!! It does work on cat pee!
Literally just drenched my rottie in this mix. He is still drying, but already smells a LOT better. Gotta go get more hydrogen peroxide. Thinking that having these ingredients on hand is a must!
I have used mouthwash for the fast 1st washing. It works in a hurry until I mix up something else. I always keep a big bottle of cheap mouthwash on hand. NOTE: watch out for the blue one, if you don’t want a blue tinted dog.
I’ve never tried it, but I read an article just this morning about removing skunk odor. It was the same as your recipe, but said that since the skunk spray is an oil, put baking soda (or baby powder) on the skunk-sprayed area to . Then brush the powder out before using the liquid recipe.
I hope this is helpful.
I have used this recipe with great success.
It is CRITICAL to keep the hydrogen peroxide bottles sealed until use. Open hydrogen peroxide rapidly turns into water when opened and becomes useless.
The magic is the hydrogen peroxide adds an oxygen molecule to the aromatic amine that is the source of the smell. So the mixture does not remove the chemical as much as it converts it into something you cannot smell.
I put this on my two BC you say leave it dry. How long after they are dry do you wash them. Or let them in the pool? 24 hours???
It should have neutralized the smell by the time it dries. If they get wet and it they seem to smell then just put the stuff on again. Usually this doesn’t happen though.
Thank you so much for posting this recipe. It’s been saving us from the smell of skunk several times over the past 10 years!
Mel
Thanks for letting us know it is working for you Melonie. It helps others to know it really works. So glad it has helped.