How to Clean a Dog’s Ears: The Right Equipment, Cleanser, and Time!


How to Clean a Dog's Ears

How to clean a dog’s ears is not a hard task, in fact, Ear cleaning is an essential easy part of taking care of your pooch.

All dog breeds need this type of cleaning, but some breeds need more care than others. Lucky for us, to clean your dog’s ear at home is not tough, you just need the right equipment, cleanser and time.

Inspecting your dog’s ears is one of the ways to monitor your overall dog’s health. Ideally, you should check your dog’s ear on a weekly bases. But before you begin the cleaning, you need to know a few things to operate the cleaning ideally.

A short coated dog- how to clean a dog's ears

Dog’s Ears Anatomy: Why It Is Important to Know About It

It is important to know what you are dealing with, knowing the dog’s ear anatomy will help you get more familiar with what you are dealing with and refrain yourself from doing any mistakes while cleaning the dog ears.

The anatomy of dog ears has an intricate shape. The outer flap(pinna) is floppy in some dogs while in others you will find it erected straight.

Dogs with floppy ears tend to need more checking because the airflow is limited for their ears, not like dogs with standing-up straight ears. The first thing you will see inside the dog’s ear is the external canal.

It is connected at the end with a horizontal canal making an L shape. The external canal ends with the eardrum. The eardrum is a thin tissue responsible for responding to the sound waves and takes a part in the hearing process.

Traveling further down beyond the eardrum, there is the middle then inner ear. These two are related to some hearing and balancing.

If any damage hits any of those places, the dog will face serious harm for his hearing and balance. And unfortunately, sometimes the damage is permanent.

Checking The Ears Before Cleaning

It is important to check for any unusual thing in your dog’s ears before starting cleaning. Let your dog sit beside you and begin with inspecting inside of his ears.

Search for any scratches, wounds, excess fluid(clear or not), or thick wax. And
Look for yeast infection, parasites or bacterial infections. If you find any of these, don’t clean your dog’s ears and reach for your veterinarian for advice.

Look for any foreign objects inside your dog’s ear, due to playing in areas full of grass or wooded areas. If you found any grass, plant seed or any other thing, try to remove it gently, If you couldn’t it is better to leave to experts to deal with.

After finishing your inspecting tour in your dog’s ears you are now ready for the cleaning routine.

What Will You Need to Clean Your Dog’s Ears

how to clean a dog's ears

When you are looking for a good ear cleanser, try to avoid buying any cleaning product with hydrogen peroxide or alcohol. Both of these may cause irritation for your dog. You can use a homemade cleanser too(like Vinegar and water).

You will need ear cleanser, cotton balls or pads, tweezers(if your dog has a lot of hair in his ear), and a towel or two.

It is recommended to do the cleaning just before bathing, also the bath or the tub is a great place for the cleaning.

Keep in mind that when your dog shakes his head with ear cleanser there, these droplets will have to go somewhere.

You could use the towel to shed from these droplets.

How to Clean Your Dog’s Ears

Dip a cotton ball with ear cleanser and squeeze it for any excess fluid. Start to Clean the inside of the ear flap gently. Remove all the dirt that is found there. If your dog’s ears are full of dirt, you may need quite a lot of cotton balls to clean the dog’s ears entirely.

Keep in mind that if you are using vinegar and water and there is any small scratch or broken skin, it will sting your dog.

Ask your vet if you can drench your dog’s ears fully with ear cleanser, if the veterinarian consented, do it right away.

Fulling your dog’s ears with a cleaning solution will help all the debris, thick hardened wax and the sticky thick material found there.

Position the opening of the bottle at the ear external canal and drench the ear with the cleanser.

Massage your dog’s ears very gently for about a minute. Your buddy will need to shake his head to get all the fluid or the remaining of it out of his ears.

Time to use the towel! shed yourself by the towel or put it around the dogs head so nothing will get any of the fluid on it. It is better if you turned your head so you don’t get anything in your eyes.

After that, once again wipe the inside of the ear flap and Ta Da your dog’s ear is clean.

Precautions to Prevent Any Unwanted Incident With Your Dog During Cleaning His Ear

Don’t let the tip of the cleanser bottle dip too much into your dog’s ears so you don’t hurt his middle ear. Don’t pressure or squeeze the bottle too hard when applying the solution. Never use a Q-tip to clean your dog’s ear as it may hit the eardrum a cause serious damage.

Dogs build up wax on their ears faster than us so they need regular cleaning to prevent ear infections from happening.

Now, you know the structure of your dog’s ear, the products you need to clean it, and how to do it at home. You are ready to do it all on your own.

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