So we’ve been having skunk problems. Every night they try to get our chickens or ducks or rabbits. So our dogs (mostly Vincent) keep guard all. Night. Long.
We wake up in the morning and the dogs are exhausted and sleep most of the day away. They’ve earned it without a shadow of a doubt because we can certainly smell how much they’ve been working. Even if they aren’t sprayed, the backyard is definitely smelly from the skunks they’ve chased off.
(I’m so glad, now, that Vincent is so good at dodging things, because we don’t have enough tomato juice to bathe him in.)
We’re trying to get another dog, because Vincent might be young and spry and energetic (and super protective of ‘his’ animals), but Sissy is getting up there in years and there’s no way she’s going to be able to help Vincent out with guard duty once the temperature drops like lead in water. I have no idea how she’s keeping up with him now.
Seriously, though, Vincent does a head check on the rabbits every morning whenever we open up the rabbit garage (there are no vehicles or machinery housed in the rabbit garage, just rabbits and animal feed). He walks through and touches noses with all of our long-time residents and even some of our short-time residents, then he turns and walks out with me as soon as I’m done filling up their water bottles/bowls.
He takes his duties very seriously and won’t let us go to bed until we’ve made sure to let him outside to start guard duty, even if he was napping when we were getting ready for bed in the first place.
Now if only we could find a way to stop the skunks from coming over in the first place so that our backyard would stop smelling skunky in the morning.
Breathing In 
I did not know that skunks were predatory. very interesting.
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I didn’t know they were either until we moved out onto the farm.
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