How do you clean a toy poodle ears?

Answer 1

Hi

First you need to gain your dogs trust. You can do this by rubbing your dogs ear (one at a time) and looking inside his ear. When your dog lets you do this, give him a treat. Eventually your dog will let you look inside his ear without any growling or biting.

How to clean the ears

Lift up your dogs ear flap and look inside the canal. Poodles have hairy ears and the hair inside the ear canal must be plucked out or removed otherwise a infection can start and this is very painful for your pal. After you have plucked the hair from one ear, praise your dog up and give him or her a treat. After 10 minutes, attempt to pluck the hair from the other ear and finish with a treat.

When you have finished the above, now the hair has been removed you can see clearly in your dogs ears. To clean the ears, use a piece of cotton wool (never a q-tip) and wet it with tepid water. Squeeze most of the water out so it's somewhat moist. Gently lift one ear, show your dog the cotton wool first (helps with mine for some reason) and gently wipe clean the outside flap and inside ear canal and remove any debris. Do not go too far inside the ear because you can cause a lot of damage. As a rule of thumb, if it's too dark to see inside the ear then don't go there. Make sure you do this to both ears and change cotton wool each time. After you have washed the ear out gently you will need to dry them out with a dry piece of cotton wool. When you have done this, give your poodle another treat for being very good.

Now the ear is clean and you can clearly see if there is any problems. If you found wax inside the ears, you can put some cold olive oil inside the ear (about 1/2 a teaspoon) and hold your dogs ear up as the olive oil runs into the canal then rub the ear between your thumb and finger - you will hear a squishing sound and this means the Olive oil has gone where it should be. Your dog may shake his ear but this is normal. Olive oil isn't their favourite thing but it does not hurt. Make sure you clean the ears with cotton wool the next day after applying olive oil and remove all debris as described above.

If your dogs ears smell or are red or inflamed or your dog has been scratching his ears a lot - see your Vet as it's probably a ear infection and contrary to popular belief they cannot be cleared up with home treatment. Ear infections require antibiotics which are inexpensive.

I hope this helped answer your question. :-)