#1 System Fresh Ear Cleaner?

[greekblue]

How do you do it if your dog won't let you?

[Ritz459]

I would first get her used to having you handle her ears, if that is an issue. Play with her ears, rub your fingers along the inside of it, and give her small tasty treats while you are doing it.

Once she doesn't mind you doing that, just wet a cotton swab with the ear cleaner, leash her up to something so she can't dart off, smear some tasty peanut butter on something to let her lick off, and then go in for the kill. Start with one ear and swab it until the cotton comes away clean (rewet different cotton balls to use after the previous one becomes dirty). Clean any part of the ear you can see, paying careful attention to the crevieces in the ear that like to hide dirt and wax. If she can't take any more than one ear being done, stop for a while and give her a break. Then try again later.

In all of the dogs I've ever bathed, I've only met one or two who did NOT want their ears touched. We just muzzled them. I'd say a good majority of dogs shy away when you go to clean their ears, but with a firm and yet gentle hand and a no-nonsense attitude they don't give you any trouble. Then the lesser majority of the dogs love getting their ears cleaned as it is like an ultimate ear rub to them.

On that note, you had said something earlier about how one of the ears might be infected because of the wax buildup? An infected ear is VERY tender and most dogs will yelp, snap, and cry when someone goes to touch the infected ear. There was a Chessie Bay Retriever in boarding once who had a horribley infected ear. She was a good dog, but if you so much as made any move towards her infected ear, she'd let out the loudest scream and snap at you.
An infected ear usually requires special ear drops to be put in it to help clear up the infection - a simple ear cleaning won't do it.

[greekblue]

She lets me touch her ears, but it is a little harder when she sees the ear cleaning bottle. She knows and tries to hide. I hold her, first pet her to try to calm her, give her a milkbone bisquit so while she tries to eat it, I put in the liquid (pretty much everything you just said). I am cleaning her ears a little bit at a time for two days now. After a few minutes, she gets better, but at first it takes her a while to let me put the liquid.

Also, she does not shake her head as much as I thought she would after I put the liquid in. One of the ears I know it bothers her because she has harder time let me touch it, but once I calmed her down and slowly rubbed the cotton (talked to her softly all along), she seemed to even enjoy it more than the other ear that does not bother her. That happened after I wrote the above email.
You reminded me to just be patient
The emergency vet had told me that her ears were ready to start an infection. I began cleaning them myself the last couple days (since her vet just pluck the hair without cleaning them or telling me anything about it.... Grrrrrr.....

Both cottons -- especially from the ear that bothers her more -- come out really dark brown. It seems will never end. No matter how much I try to clean and even with the liquid, this dark brown (dirt?) it is unending!

[Ritz459]

Yep, when a dog has a heavy wax buildup - espeically when on the brink of starting an infection - it seems like it never ends. A thing you can try to use instead of cotton swabs that might help you clean out more of the gunk are those cotton gauze swabs. That way it is more like a cloth cleaning her ear and it allows you to physically get more of the wax out. When a dog comes in for a bath that has extreamly dirtied ears, that is what I use.

Something I am never comfortable doing, even though the bottle's directions say to, is squirting the liquid directly into the dog's ear. I guess that comes from having siblings that suffer from swimmers ear. In my mind, I don't understand how putting a liquid into an already blocked up ear is going to help. Of course that isn't true, as the cleaner helps loosen up all of the gunk in the ear.

But if the dog isn't shaking its head to get the liquid out (which in turn gets the loosened gunk out) and already has an aversion to getting it squirted in her ear, I don't know if I would put the cleaner directly into her ear. What I do is I squirt the cleaner onto a cotton ball until the ball is saturated. Then I rub that inside the dogs ear, going as deep as I can see, and then repeating the process.

[greekblue]

Thank you very much! I will do as you say.