My dog Jake has been scratching at his ears lately... I went to clean them this morning and followed directions on the bottle of ear cleaner: put a little in the ear, massage at base of ear/ear canal, wipe with cotton or tissue. Dog may shake head to void any moisture in ear.

Jake was practically hopping around on one foot shaking his head and trying to rub up against the furniture!! If I hadn't been so worried it would have been comical. He was obviously not comfortable. I did warm the solution (by placing the bottle in a bowl of warm water) before application.

I've read that if the dog's eardrum is punctured any liquid in the ear can cause pain and damage. Was jake just overreacting? or should I be worried about a puncture?? Maybe I just accidentally put too much in the ear?

After a minute or two he settled down and acted normally. I gave him some treats and lots of petting and praise. He was at the vet last in October for a checkup where she inspected and cleaned his ears. There was quite a bit of build-up and she told me to clean them more often. He hasn't done this before though.

this is what I used... http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2751910

Sounds to me like he just had cleaning fluid in his ear canal and he was trying to get it out. Have you ever gone swimming and had your ear canal fill with water? It can be hard to get out sometimes.

We use cotton balls and hydrogen peroxide and my mal always shakes to get the excess liquid out of his ears (and subsequentially sprays H2O2 all over the place). We don't pour H2O2 down his ear, but we swab out his ears with the cotton ball pretty aggressively as far as we can reach. Ed's video (Your Puppy - 8 weeks to 8 months) says you don't need to do anything more than this.

If the episode only lasted a few minutes, I wouldn't worry about it. If it goes on for more than a day, then that's probably a problem.