Interesting notes: When skunks are threatened they will arch their backs, stamp their feet, and shuffle backwards. They may also walk on their front feet with their tails and back held high in the air, hissing or growling. Since skunks don't run very fast or climb trees, their main weapon of defense is a strongly scented, yellow liquid stored in two glands on either side of its anus. Each gland holds about a teaspoon of liquid. When a skunk decides to spray, it bends its body into a U-shape pointing both its rear end and face towards the potential victim. It aims the nipples of its scent glands and shoots the musky liquid in a 30 to 45 degree arc. The liquid can be discharged in either a mist or a stream and is accurate up to about 10 feet. The skunk shoots less accurately up to 16 feet (Godin 1982).
The chemical causing the musky scent of the skunk's spray is actually a mixture of three different chemicals that can cause your eyes to burn if hit directly, but the pain does not last and is not damaging. Temporary blindness can occur but this is due mostly to the watering of the eyes. Ill effects can also occur if it is taken internally. The smell, however, is not temporary and there are a number of ways you can try to get rid of it.
My dog has provided me with several opportunities to discover which method is the best for removing this obnoxious smell. Tomato juice? A pet shop enzyme? Soap and water? These can all help to reduce the smell but nothing completely removes the scent except time. I have tried all of these remedies, each separately on different occasions and, once, all three one right after the other. No matter what I did, I could still smell the musk until it gradually faded several weeks later. I think all of these remedies can be useful providing your dog doesn't get hit too badly. Mine, however, has always seemed to get a full blast.
An interesting item on the skunk's diet are tenebrionid beetles, some of which are capable of spraying a noxious chemical. I find it ironic that an animal whose main defense is a chemical spray eats an insect that has the same method of defense. Skunks are quite adept at avoiding the spray, however, keeping their eyes shut as they rapidly roll the beetle around in the dirt as it extinguishes its spray. Although skunks will sometimes be hit by the spray, the effects don't seem to discourage them as they continue rolling the beetles around until all of the chemical has been depleted (Slobochikoff 1978).