1998        RIP 8/18/05

     Remington is a Red/Rust Docked/Cropped Doberman Pincher.  She was somewhere around 2 years old when we got her.  We aren't sure of her age because she was abandoned by her previous owners somewhere in Dallas around the 1st of Nov of 98.  Remington was turned over to the Doberman Rescue of North Texas by a neighbor who found her tied up behind a commercial property.  She couldn't have ended up in a better place.  The Doberman Rescue of North Texas, Inc. is located in Grand Prairie, between Dallas and Ft. Worth and is a Charitable Texas Corporation.  Most of their Dobermans are rescued from "Death Row" in animal shelters.  The dogs are checked by a vet, given all shots, tested for heartworms, spayed or neutered, treated for any illnesses or medical problems that are found and micro-chipped.  They then evaluate each dog and try to match them up  with qualified applicants.  They shipped Remington via air cargo to Lubbock (91 bucks) where Kaitlin and I picked her up.   I had to drive home one-handed, patting Remington with the other.

     That is the physical of how we ended up with a Doberman!  There was a lot of legwork (maybe I should say internet work) involved before we actually ended up with a living breathing dog.  John would not have a little yippee dog, no way, no how!  That cut my search about in half.  I detest huge piles of dog du in the yard, so that ruled out the really large dogs, such as the Great Perianese we were offered "free".  Before I knew it, I was surfing the Doberman web ring, finding out lots of stuff about them that I certainly never knew.  Things such as; they should be housedogs, they are very loving and cuddly, and they are extremely intelligent (translated to very trainable to me).  Dobermans are often called the original Velcro Dog - having one means you will never go to the bathroom alone again (and I thought that was what children were for)!  Then I started actually contacting breeders about puppy prices and found out they sell for about what a fairly good horse does here.  I had almost given up when I ran across the Doberman Rescue of North Texas' web site.  They had a very long list of dogs that had been abandoned or just lost and in dire need of a good home.  For a donation of $165, we received a dog that had been spayed, tested for heartworms, given all her shots, already had cropped ears, a docked tail and was micro-chipped.  It wasn't the puppy the kids really wanted, but then again - she was already housetrained!  In the month we have had Remington, we have also discovered she most likely has had obedience lessons.  She is a real sweetheart and will stand with her head in your lap as long as you will pat her.   If we are outside, she wants to be out, if we're in, she wants to be in and you don't leave the car open with her around - she loads right up!  The only thing I would change about her would be to have her be friends with our "Allie" cat.  The only thing she can think about is how much fun Allie would be to chase.  So, check out the Doberman Rescue of North Texas.  It is a very informative and educational site, but beware....you may get the yearning for your own Doberdog!

MAGIC STUFF

Odor Solution:  1 quart of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide, which costs about $2 at a drugstore; 1/4 cup of baking soda; and 1 teaspoon of liquid soap, which breaks up the oils in the skunk spray and allows the other ingredients in the solution to do their stuff.  The solution should be rinsed off the pet with tap water.

Here's the story:

CHEMIST HAS THE POWER TO TAME SKUNK'S SPRAY by Peter Kendall Copyright 1994 by the Chicago Tribune

    Salk conquered polio.  Einstein unraveled relativity.  And Krebaum?  Well, Paul Krebaum, it appears, has developed the first home remedy for skunk spray.  If ever an idea was in the air, it was this:   How do you get rid of the smell that comes from two tiny but ingenious glands at the business end of a skunk?  A garden hose is impotent, soap is utterly useless, and tomato juice is a quaint old wives' tale that has left many people with skunk-sprayed dogs that not only stink, but are pink.  But Krebaum's formula, distributed nationally in recent months on e-mail and in state agriculture department bulletins, is winning over converts who thought the only viable antidote was the passage of time.  The story of how Krebaum, a Lisle, IL chemist, has conquered the fetid, putrid odor of skunk is a simple tale of necessity being the mother of invention.  But, alas, Krebaum's formula will never bring riches to its inventor, for the solution is trapped within a cruel chemical Catch-22.  The very chemical properties that make his formula deodorize skunk spray make it impossible to package.  It will burst out of any bottle.  If the story of Krebaum's formula is ever made into a movie, the first scene will show Krebaum working away in his lab at Molex Inc. in Lisle.  His face is screwed up as he smells something bad.  He is doing research using chemicals called thiols - some of the nastiest smelling chemicals around.  Thiols are produced by many things, including the degradation of proteins.  Thiols are responsible for the odors that comes from decomposing flesh and fecal matter.  Most animals have a deep-seated repulsion to thiols, a gift of evolution that keeps them from eating things that will make them ill.  Using basic chemistry knowledge, Krebaum figured out a way to get these foul smelling thiols out of his lab by changing them into other compounds.  The trick was oxidation - getting oxygen molecules to bond with thiols and change them into things that didn't smell bad at all.  To do that, he made a solution of simple ingredients - hydrogen peroxide and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda); that did the trick quite well.   The solution threw off oxygen like a dog shakes off water, and some of that oxygen grabbed onto the thiols and neutralized them.  Meanwhile, in Lisle and elsewhere, evolution had been chugging along for eons and produced an animal that scientists call mephitis mephitis, the common striped skunk.  Natural selection led the skunk to develop a spray that exploits other animals aversion to thiols.  Skunk spray is, fundamentally, essence of putrefaction.  But fate never would bring mephitis mephitis and Paul Krebaum together, at least not directly.  Krebaum has himself never smelled skunk spray at any greater concentration than that lingering in the air on a country road.   There were intermediaries - one of Krebaum's colleagues and a pet cat.   "He came into work and said his cat had an encounter with a skunk", Krebaum recalled.  "He said he had tried tomato juice, and it didn't work, and the cat still wasn't able to come into the house."  Krebaum knew skunk spray was made of thiols ("general knowledge", he calls it) and suggested using a variation of the formula he used for getting rid of thiols in the lab.  "He came back the next day and said the stuff worked like magic, that every trace of the skunk odor is completely gone from the cat, "Krebaum said. 

    In October of 1993, Chemical and Engineering News published Krebaum's formula.  One of the most interested readers of the article was Tom McCutcheon, who was then with the West Virginia Department of Agriculture.   McCutcheon, a plant pest biologist, was something of an answer man for callers to the department.  "We'd get probably a dozen calls a year, "What do we do, our pet's been sprayed by a skunk,'"McCutcheon said.  "Tomato juice is the old remedy.  Everybody would say, 'We tried that, and it doesn't work at all.'   We really didn't have a remedy."  When he read of Krebaum's formula, he was skeptical.  Over the years, he had learned never to recommend anything he hadn't tried himself, but getting sprayed by a skunk posed practical difficulties.  It was while driving last February through the hickory and oaks forests of Roane County, West Virginia, that McCutcheon spotted a road-killed skunk.  More hit than run over and preserved by the late winter chill, the skunk was in fine shape.  Carefully, he wrapped the skunk inside two plastic bags and put it in the trunk.  He knew he had a potent specimen for his experiment when he went into a drugstore to buy the ingredients for Krebaum's formula and the druggist noticed the smell on McCutcheon's clothing.   Back behind his office, he made the solution.  "The whole time, my eyes were watering - I had never been this close to a skunk in all my life, "he said.   "I dunked the skunk in the bucket, and immediately the smell went away.   I was very surprised and impressed." 

    Krebaum had briefly considered trying to figure out a way to patent his formula, but quickly abandoned the idea.  "Once you mix the hydrogen peroxide with the baking soda, it is no longer stable,"said Krebaum.   "You can't store it in a bottle, because it would explode from all the oxygen."  "It wasn't worth trying to get a patent on it because I couldn't put it in a bottle," said Krebaum.  "So why not make this a free gift to humanity type deal."