Greetings,

I have a six month old dark mahogany Belgian Malinois. I am concerned that her ears will never be erect 100% of the time. Currently, she keeps her ears in 'airplane mode' or completely floppy to the sides. She is, however, able to get them erect ONLY when she is VERY interested in something and she doesn't remain intense for too long as for the most part, she has them erect when she is playing fetch and is waiting for me to throw her ball.

She has had her ears taped in the past. When the ear taping is removed, the eras will be erect for approximately one day.

I have read that Mals and GSDs can have their ears down during the teething stages, however, my girl has finished teething.

Any help/advice/insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

So her ears stand on and off? Just not for any length of time?

I truly believe that if their ears have stood once, they will stand again. Ear size and weight can determine whether the ears stand for good.

My male Shepherd will be 6 months Monday and his ears have stood a few times, for a few days at at time, since 8 weeks old (I bred him and have had him since birth), but have gone into almost every shape/formation possible for ears. I secretly kind of liked it, since my other two Shepherds had ears that stood right away and stayed like that

Are her adult teeth ALL the way in, or did her lower/upper canines just fall out recently?

I have seen dogs take up to 8 months to get their ears fully up, depending on teething stages. Most people will start to tape after 7 months if the ears have not come up by then.

If it were me, I would wait until she is exactly 7 months (count weeks, NOT from date to date). And if they are not up (or on their way up) by then, tape them for 4 weeks, 7 days taped, one day of rest - changing the tape every other day. Or glue in inserts, whichever works best for you and the dog. Then reassess - if they are pretty good at standing after the first month, I would leave them alone, any floppy-ness, I would do another month.

My son has a French Bulldog (6 mos old) having floppy ear troubles.

Against my advice, following a pattern from the internet, he used duct tape to tape his pup's ears. He covered the ears inside and out with duct tape and bound them together across the top of the head.

Well, I thought that would be a disaster, irritating, sharp edges on the duct tape. I had plenty of objections. He left this on for 2 wks.

It worked perfectly and now the pup's ears stand erect. The duct tape did not, in fact, remove hair when it was removed.

here's a story , but not much advice . . .

when i was young , we had rescued a female GSD from a very abusive situation . looking back on it now , she probably shouldn't have been bred , but my dads' friend had a very good male GSD with whom we bred our bitch .

the female was so traumatized from her previous life , she would literally never have her ears in an upright position , although she certainly was capable of doing it .

we wound up keeping what was considered the best male from the litter ( my dog fritz ! ) . he turned out to be a fantastic dog in so many ways , but the one thing that he didn't have were erect ears , and i'm convinced to this day that it was because his mother did not " model " that appearance .


ps . i'm pretty sure this was the root of my near obsession with erect ears to this day . i should probably seek counselling , but i'm slowly learning how to appreciate dogs with " other " ears lol .

Edited by ian bunbury (11/15/2014 02:00 PM)
Edit reason: missed one critical word lol