ears

Cleaning Your Dog’s Ears  This is a very important section because bad ears not only make a Cocker miserable, they can kill them.  So, as your dog’s guardian, and first line of defense, you need to understand your role in keeping their ears healthy.

Did you ever hear of ear ablation surgery?  Ear ablation surgery is the final attempt at a cure for recurring ear infections in dogs.  The surgeon will operate on a dog’s ear or both ears usually and remove all diseased and infected tissue and ear canal cartilage.  Then the opening into the ear is sewn closed.  This does not mean that another infection can’t happen inside the dog’s head, because it certainly can.  More surgeries might even be required, and your dog could die. 

Cockers that have reached the point of needing ear ablation surgery have had recurring ear infections which have passed through the eardrum right and affected their middle and inner ears.  The operative word here is recurring.  These poor dogs are in chronic pain, and you might see them holding their heads cocked to one side, or losing their balance walking or walking in circles.  Their eyelids and lip on the side of the infected ear could also be drooping as if they had a stroke.

All surgeries are dangerous and risk death, infection, and complications, but in ablations, since the facial nerve which is responsible for tear secretions in the eyes as well as eyelid and lip function on the side of the face being operated on runs just below the ear canal, so the surgeon has to be very careful not to nick or stretch it.  The parotid salivary gland also surrounds the base of the ear and has to be protected from being nicked or complications, such as paralysis, will result.

Why in the world am I telling you this?  Because I want you to understand how important it is to examine your Cocker’s ears daily and clean them daily as well.  

CLICK HERE to read how one of our members avoided an ear ablation surgery for her dog, and all she’s done to help her with the allergies that can turn her ear as red as a tomato in moments!

How Does Your Dog Get An Ear Infection?  Cockers get infections in their ears from mold, yeast, or bacteria growing in the ear canal.  Cockers ears are the perfect place to breed bacteria and mold for several reasons:  first, Cocker’s ears are floppy and the ear is heavy, so their ears cover the ear canal opening and prevent ear circulation.  It also gets pretty hot under a Cocker’s ear, just lift one up and feel inside with your finger, so bacteria, yeast and mold have an environment that is warm with no air flow, plus the added bonus that the glands in the ear produce secretions that the mold and bacteria feed on!  Ewwww!

How Do You Prevent Your Cocker From Getting Ear Infections?  You do it with daily ear checks and daily ear cleaning.  First, let’s deal with the ear checking.  What do you look for in dog’s ears?

• Look for what’s normal:  get to know your dog’s ears by looking in them every day.  If you know what your dog’s ears look like when they’re healthy, you’ll spot trouble before it starts!
• Look for wax and discharge:  pay attention to any discharge from your dog’s ears.  What color is it, light, dark, black?  How does it smell?  Is it profuse?  Pussy?  There should not be much if any discharge from a healthy ear.  If you’re seeing lots of brown, black, sticky wax in the ear canal and in the outside part of your dog’s ear, again, get to the vet ASAP, don’t let it go.
• Look at the skin under the ear flap and inside the ear canal:  keep in mind how your dog’s ears look normally and notice any changes.  Is the skin red?  Swollen?  Scaly? Broken?  Bleeding? 
• Sniff inside:  pay attention to how your dog’s ears smell.  Clean ears have a mild ear scent if you pick up on it.  But if you lift your dog’s ears and they smell in any way different, get to the vet ASAP, don’t let it go.

How to Clean Your Dog’s Ears  There are many places on the Internet to find articles and watch videos of how to clean your dog’s ears.  Before you attempt to clean your dog's ears, it’s important that your vet examine your dog’s ears to determine if they're healthy or if there are any problems. Have your vet show you the best way to clean your dog's ears, and let them watch while you do it.   You and your vet should develop a daily cleaning plan together.

My Way  Because of my own experience with my three cockers, I clean my dogs’ ears every day, but I do not pour any liquid into them to do it.  Dog’s ear canals are shaped like an L, so whatever liquid gets in there, such as water when you give them a bath, it doesn’t get out easily. Bad things can grow inside and cause problems when all the liquid doesn’t come out.  Keeping that in mind, every day I take a cotton ball and soak it with Blue Powder Ear Treatment and I rub it all over the outside of the ear under the ear flap, as in the picture below.  Lots of dirt and bacteria get under the ear, which you’ll see on the cotton ball, and this bacteria travel into the ear canal and trouble starts.  It also gets very hot under the ear, so things are always growing there, winter and summer.


Picture before and after

I will also take a Q-tip and wet it with the Blue Powder Ear Treatment and go around the walls of the ear canal the way my vet showed me.  Never ever would I push a Q-tip into my dogs’ ears.  This basically cleans the bacteria they pick up and grow daily.  Let your vet show you how.

For ears with lots of ear discharge, you will have to do two things:  clean the ears and find out what’s causing such wax buildup.  A visit to the vet and an ear culture could help determine if there’s bacteria, mold or yeast.  If the ear is just producing all of this wax you have to look at the dog’s diet.  The more wax, the more food for the bad stuff to grow.  My dog Teddy has perfectly clean ears all the time, except if I give him anything with soy.  Even a vitamin E pill containing soy will make my Ted’s ears produce globs of brown wax within 24 hours of taking it, yet Wheat Germ Oil causes no problems.  Really waxy ears will require a deep cleaning that the vet may have to do.

Diet and Healthy Ears is really important to look at for the health of a Cocker’s, or any dog for that matter, ears because the wrong foods can cause excess glandular secretions and the bacteria, mold and yeast will just thrive on it. 

CLICK HERE for a very well-written article by Helen  McKinnon on the Blue Powder Ear Treatment which explains how to make it, how to treat the ears, and the role diet plays in ear infections.  This is a very valuable article to print and save.

Daily Ear Cleaners that Our Members Use:

• Blue Powder ear treatment
• Kelco Zap
• Best Shot

Products You Should Have in Your Ear Infection Fighting Arsenal (discuss with your vet)

• Animax (formerly Panalog, available from your vet)
• Zymox ear cleaner with and without hydrocortisone (available from your vet or on-line)
• An otoscope to examine your dog’s ears available from Fosters & Smith for $15.00

If Your Dog Has an Ear Infection You Want to CURE It, Not Treat It:  Go to your vet, either a holistic or conventional one.  Be sure that your vet doesn’t just do a physical look-in into the ears and prescribe an antibiotic by mouth or an antibiotic ear wash.  Demand, if you have to, a culture of the ear.  This is really important because you should know if your dog has bacteria, mold or yeast growing in their.  It matters.  First of all, you don’t want to start an antibiotic if you have a mold or yeast issue because it won’t cure the problem.  Without a culture you can set your dog up for a cycle of antibiotics which cause complications and yeast infections or new bacterial growth and the need for more antibiotics.  Start out treating an ear infection by knowing exactly it is that you’re fighting.

Most often bacterial and yeast infections go hand in hand so you’ll need a multi-level approach to attack them.  Secondly, you will need to understand why this infection happened so you can work on preventing it from recurring. 

Your vet should show you how to clean your dog’s ears.  Practice with the vet until you’re comfortable with it because, if you don’t do it right while he or she watches you, won’t get rid of the infection and there is no point in paying for the medications.