Will Falconer, DVM Moderator
Nothing's an automatic death sentence, but you'd have to be really involved and get help in the case of a rabid animal biting your dog.
The first step would be to determine if the animal was indeed rabid. A bite wound from a non-rabid animal is not a big deal to get to heal. How would you find out if rabies was involved? You'd have to get that skunk and bring it to the public health department or a veterinarian. They'd get the head to CDC and get an answer in a day or two.
If it was positive, then you've got the regulatory world in your face, because, let's face it, this is a deadly human disease. "Your dog has never been vaccinated? You have two choices: 1. Immediate euthanasia, or 2. 6 month quarantine in a facility that disallows close contact. At your expense."
If the skunk's rabies status is unknown, or it scuffles with your dog and runs off, what will you do? Home care? That's great if it wasn't rabid, you'll do fine. But if it was? Your likelihood of getting rabies from your dog getting rabies is the significant risk here. So, you're busy nursing your wounded dog back from its wounds and she starts choking a couple weeks later. Thinking it could be a bone, she was just eating one earlier, you reach in her mouth to find it, and you've just been exposed to rabies virus in her saliva. A cut, a scrape, a hangnail on that hand? The virus is now in you.
I hope you can appreciate the seriousness of this. I don't intend to underplay that in this or any of my writings. While repeated vaccinations throughout life for rabies is nonsense, I think it's not nonsense to get one after 4 months of age, especially living in a skunk populated area like you do.
Please be wise in weighing everything here. You'd be a fool to take this lightly.