My pup has an ear infection and I took him to the vet the other day. My dog needs his ear washed out and medicine put in it but he hates anything by his ear. I can rub the inside of his ear with my thumb but when he sees a cotton ball all bets are off. The vet even gave me some medicine to help him clam down a bit but it does not work. He is 90lbs and holding him down does not really seem like the right or safe thing to do. Does anyone have a good way to clean their GSD ears when the dog dislikes it?

Thanks for any and all help,
Dale

Peanut butter on the roof of his mouth.....works for me

 Quote: patricia lawyer

My pup has an ear infection and I took him to the vet the other day. My dog needs his ear washed out and medicine put in it but he hates anything by his ear. I can rub the inside of his ear with my thumb but when he sees a cotton ball all bets are off. The vet even gave me some medicine to help him clam down a bit but it does not work. He is 90lbs and holding him down does not really seem like the right or safe thing to do. Does anyone have a good way to clean their GSD ears when the dog dislikes it? ....

They all dislike it.

Is this "Flush" and Otomax?

Here is what I do with a dog who has not learned about the wonderful treat-reward that comes after each step of the ear procedure (my dogs have now). (BTW, those fabulous treats are in view, in smelling distance, clearly meant for the dog, etc., etc.)

Number one is to have your stuff ready. I do this near a door to the outside (or in the bathroom or actually outside if weather permits) because there will be shaking-out-of-ear-stuff. I squirt in the Flush and fold down the ear flap and squoosh it around gently (and you will hear the squooshing sound). Do them both if you can, but one at a time is fine. Then I let go. The dog WILL shake his head like crazy.

The debris will be moved from deep down towards the outside by the Flush combined with the vigorous shaking.

Then I take a cloth and gently wipe the debris and Flush from where it is now in the ear flap.

Treat.

Now quickly do the Otomax. Have it shaken down into the applicator tube part of the bottle first so you're not squeezing air into his ear and then fighting him for another try. Massage it around with your hand on the outer flap.

Treat.

Otomax in the other ear.

Many treats.

That's my way, anyway. Calm, fast, efficient, and prepared.

Yeah he does not even want us to touch that ear now It does look better today though. He has been taking his oral meds like a champ. I think it is going to be a long road for him to let me do a flush with anything or put any meds in his ear.

Dale

Dale, I use Connie's methods, plus it can help a lot to have your pup in a corner.

good luck,
leih

Touch his ear without doing anything and give him a treat several times a day. Then hold him and have the stuff you normally use in view and then give him a treat and let him go. Then progress to touching the bottle to the ear canal without squirting anything in. Then you can go to randomly doing that throughout the day with a real treatment mixed in. It'll teach him to relax some since bad stuff doesn't happen every time you grab him and have his meds present. My lab really liked to have the flush massaged in his ears so we spent extra time doing that before letting him go to shake his head. I would think muzzling the dog is preferable to drugging it to accept an ear cleaning if it's really that bad. Our dogs learn that they can give us as many dirty looks as they want. If we need to clean ears or trim nails they are expected to tolerate it.

Just out of curiosity was it Acepromizen(sp?) that the vet gave you? That stuff seems to be a real hit and miss. Our older boxer was just about out for half the day after getting Ali's meds once and they barely had any effect on Ali who was smaller than Elvis at the time.

My girl is food driven so i hold raw meat above her head and squirt, as I give her the food.She eats,swollows,and shakes,but it at least gets the medicine in.

 Quote: Patricia Lawyer

Yeah he does not even want us to touch that ear now It does look better today though. He has been taking his oral meds like a champ. I think it is going to be a long road for him to let me do a flush with anything or put any meds in his ear.

Dale

Is there pus in there? How bad does it look? Is there any grayish fluid?

 Quote: Cathy Goessman

Touch his ear without doing anything and give him a treat several times a day. Then hold him and have the stuff you normally use in view and then give him a treat and let him go. Then progress to touching the bottle to the ear canal without squirting anything in. Then you can go to randomly doing that throughout the day with a real treatment mixed in. It'll teach him to relax some since bad stuff doesn't happen every time you grab him and have his meds present.

This is great advice that I should have included.

Also, it sounds like this is a bad one. I just want to say that examining the ears of an infection-prone dog regularly can tell you the day they start to look inflamed inside, which is a whole lot easier to deal with (on you and the poor dog) than full-blown infection. What is the underlying cause? Do you know?

I am so sorry. The pain of an ear infection is something pretty hard to describe.

I took him to the vet right away when I noticed it. It is a bacterial infection they said. He is on Rimadyl and Cephalexin. The vet gave us Tramadol to help calm him down so we could put the topical medicine otibiotic in his ear. The Tramadol does not have any calming affect on him at all. He has old blood in his ear from where he was scratching it that is bothering him and I really want to get it flushed out. I might head back to the vet this morning and get that ear flushed. He has no pus or fluid coming out of it. He seems fine other than his 1 ear is down a bit and he shakes his head from side to side once in a while.

I made the mistake of thinking I should just let him relax for the day. He was wound up and going nuts wanting to work. He is a working dog that I have been training with everyday. I just figured since he was not feeling 100% he needed to rest. He let me know that we needed to keep up our routine.

You know the 1 big thing I have noticed since this happened is that he does not really want his food in the morning. He is 7 months old so I am not sure what's up. He is very food driven and will eat later in the day. He eats fine at other times will work for treats and seems to be doing well.

Thanks for your input and help
Dale