Ear Cleaning

[Walshies]

Hi all,

Just tapping into the experience pool on here!

We clean Fudge's ears every 2 days with a vet recommended solution. The one thing we have noticed is that one ear is full of gunk and the other one has hardly any dirt.  Everything is fine but I just wondered if anyone else has experienced the one dirty ear syndrome?

Grateful for any advice.

Dave

[JennyBee]

Yes, Brodie's left ear . It has always been the problem one, since she was a pup. It was also the first ear to get pseudomonas, although unfortunately that skipped to the right ear. The left ear is narrower than the right because of the infections, and I suspect this may be one reason why it's always causing bother. The right does get infections too, but nowhere near as bad or as frequent as her left and has nowhere near the damage.

Interestingly, when we were at the specialist at the start of last year, the vet found bacteria in her left ear and yeast in her right.

I suppose I should be grateful it's not both of them, but it's been left so very sensitive and painful after all this time.

The only advice I have is to ask the vet to do swabs when there's an infection if they don't do it already, so that they can tailor the treatment. It would be interesting to know why this happens

[maddy74]

Willows ears to me are always yukky. I think they smell fusty too and i clean them out about every 5 days. When she had her dental back in october i spoke to the vet about it. She said she wasn't concerned about it but would have a look under anaesthetic and reported back all was well. She seems to have one ear worse than the other and i mentioned that to her too. She said everything was okay. 

[linda c]

Blue's right ear is always worse than his other one. Used to clean them once a week but now only every 3 weeks. I do keep his ears very short on the inside to let the air get to them and they seem a lot better.
I use Quistel ear cleaner which I've found very good and have used it for the last 5 years, not the cheapest but as I don't get any real problems it is obviously doing a good job 

[MIN]

Geema always has a dirty ear and a clean one   

[elaine.e]

William had dirty ears and frequent ear infections when he was young, leaving his ear canals narrowed, but hasn't had any problems since I changed his diet 4 years ago. Louis has lovely clean ears and I think has only had dirty ears once and he's coming up for 5 years old.

I don't clean their ears, working on the theory of leaving well alone unless there's a problem. But I have Thornit powder in the house and that would be the first thing I'd try if it looked like a problem was starting up. I'd sooner use a dry powder than a liquid that made the ears wet all the time, although I realise there's no choice once there's an infection.

I don't know if I've just been lucky or if it's because they hardly ever swim or have a bath, so the insides of their ears don't get wet. Maybe it's also connected with walking in the New Forest where the grass is permanently grazed down to nothing, so they never walk in long or even normal height grass

[Walshies]

Thanks all - good stuff as usual.

We are happy his ears are ok, just couldn't understand why one is dirtier than the other - looks like it is not unusual.

[Sadiebear]

Sadie is the same. I go in every few days with an extra-senstive baby wipe wrapped around my little finger and she loves having it done, must feel nice and cool. Always right ear has wax, left ear not so much