skunk(n.) common weasel-like mammal of North America that emits a fetid odor when threatened, 1630s, squunck, from a southern New England Algonquian language (perhaps Massachusett) word, from Proto-Algonquian */šeka:kwa/, from */šek-/ "to urinate" + */-a:kw/ "fox" [Bright]. — EtymOnline
The connection between Hexbear and skunks has been underappreciated until recently. Skunks are cute and cuddly when you get to know them, but they stink terribly if you don’t respect them. Many people, shitheads by habit, never learn this distinction.
Eighteenth-century Jesuit missionary Martin Dobrizhoffer, who tangled with one, wrote, "Had I a hundred tongues I should think them all insufficient to convey an adequate idea of the stench" and concluded that "Europe may be congratulated upon her good fortune in being unacquainted with this cursed beast" ["An Account of the Abipones," as translated from the Latin by Sara Coleridge, the poet's daughter]. — EtymOnline
The name skunk is historically borrowed as a term of slander; unjustly so, I emphasize, as skunks are awesome.
You would think that dogs, being essentially a walking nose, would learn the lesson quicker than anyone
They don't actually smell bad until they let it rip, I've encountered the skunk that sprayed my dog a few times out in the neighborhood at night and there wasn't any tell tale odor.