The pine cones are falling off the trees right now, but they’re different somehow than I’m used to seeing them. They’re very green, rather than the fully formed, prickly, brown ones typically scattered across the lawn. While mowing a few days ago I started grabbing green cones and pitching them, only to discover my hands covered in the stuff….pitch, that is. Every single cone was oozing the nasty sap and I had to use fingernail polish to remove it.

Fast forward a few days to yesterday. We were getting ready to go to friends for dinner and our daughter and hubby already had our two dogs at their house. Lacey, or little 6 lb Chihuahua that you see in the picture with their puppy, is one of our two.

Marnee called about 45 minutes before we were due to leave with a frantic plea for help with Lacey. Somehow she’d managed to straddle something covered with pitch…whether she lay down on a bed of green cones, or what, we’ll never know….but the inside of her back legs and tail were covered. She has a very plumy tail and ‘feather’s down her back legs, and very fine, soft hair.

I took a few minutes to search the internet hoping for a household solution and found it. I grabbed a jar from the fridge and raced down the driveway to their house. Marnee and Brian were a bit horrified as I started slathering my poor dog with mayonnaise, and rubbing it into her fur, but I read two different posts that said it worked for them, so I figured it couldn’t hurt.

Ten minutes later we rinsed her off and shampooed her, and every bit of pitch was gone. Unfortunately, Marnee had cut her feathers and part of her tail before I got there, as it was so balled up with sap, and she didn’t think there was any way of getting it off. In fact, poor Lacey’s back legs were almost stuck together and some of the hair was pulled out. She’s fine now and we know what to do next time one of our pets (or ourselves) gets in a sticky situation!