Preventing ear infections: How to pluck your dogs ears

As I've discussed before, dog ear infections are largely preventable with the right attention and preventative treatment.

An important part of this is plucking the ears of dogs with very hairy ears.  Dogs with hairy ears include many dogs with long coats, such as Poodles, Shih-Tzus and Cocker Spaniels.  As a good general rule, if your dog needs to be clipped, their ears should be plucked at the time unless there is a good reason not to.

Good reasons include: 

• Ears aren't very hairy
• Ears stay clean and smell good without plucking
• The weather is very cold: hair in ears keeps these structures warm
• Ears are sore or infected at the moment: in this case plucking should be done under sedation or anaesthesia, or deferred until the ears have been treated.  Plucking sore or infected ears can make things worse, and should only be done on the advice of a vet.

Plucking ears is usually very easy, and dogs tolerate it surprisingly well.

I think the key is only plucking hair from inside the ear canal, never the hair outside the canal (this seems to hurt more.  It can be clipped if required).  In most cases, just using your thumb and forefinger to tightly squeeze the hair and pluck out a pinch full works well.  This may need to be repeated 2-5 times.  Don't overdo it, you can always do more tomorrow.  The ear doesn't need to be bald, just thin the hair so the ear isn't clogged up with hair and wax.

A good time to pluck your dogs ears is when they are relaxing on your lap or couch.

Check out this video for some more tips.

http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CD4QtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D89IZfoZF93g&ei=gHfBTJG-GYe0vwOJ-fCnCA&usg=AFQjCNHIYFiEvx4IsnJoq1AKHBbBwGOvaA&sig2=RtcbWlJRJdbMxjeTRlb6cA

Dog Vet