Dog Health & Cleaning Ears

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Jim Leske, animal trainer and behaviorist for Expert Village. Today I'm here to talk to you about ear cleaning and your pets. Ear cleaning can be a very challenging subject for any animal lover and their pets, but with a little bit of time, patience, kindness and understanding, it can be a smooth, quick and enjoyable experience for both you and your pet. This is Bear. Bear came from an environment where he would not even let people touch his ears, and you see we've worked on him and he's gotten very very used to that. I'm using the treat as a positive distraction. You can use anything. Some people use cotton swabs. Some people use Kleenex, some people prefer to let a professional groomer handle this. Either way, you do not want to go deep enough in the ear. One; to damage the eardrum, and two; not be able to retrieve the object that you're using to clean the ears out with. So I have a tissue. I'm balling up the ends so that my finger doesn't go too far. I'm gently holding the ear back, and I'm going down as far as the Kleenex will let me go without forcing it. So this is probably on a large dog like this, this is probably about a third to a half of an inch into the ear. Once I've done that, I'm coming back; I'm working my way out, and I'm making it more like a massage. And as you see, Bear is responding very calmly like that. We can do both ears. I'm using a clean tissue for each ear. Sometimes there can be quite a bit of buildup in there. At the same time, if you should see any blood, this could be a case of an ear mite or something like that. Or even worse-case scenario, a tick, and that's definitely something you would want to take to your vet right away and bring it to their attention so that they can apply the appropriate medication to it. So once I've worked my way out, and I'm coming all the way up through the ear and, again, I'm looking that the ear is clean. No scabbing, no bruising, no blood spots from a scab or from a bug. And we're all done. Bear did very very very good. We always finish with a treat to make it fun, and there's one for you. I'm Jim Leske and I hope this ear-cleaning tip helps you and your pet. For Expert Village, thank you.

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