Ear question. - Page 1

Ok - all you experts out there. This is my 5 month old boy Gunther Von Banffy Haus.

Can anyone tell me (from looking at his ear and your past experience) if his ear is gonna be floppy forever, or is this just teething and the fact he is only 5 months old.  When we picked him up at 8 weeks both ears were standing up perfectly. 

 Our Vet  has recommended a course of Vitamin C to try and help get this ear up.

Any thoughts/suggestions/recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

You also need to start training the muscles in the ear.  Ask your breeder for help with inserting a form to help.  You can buy these on-line- see other posts about ear forms.

He is a good canidate since the one ear is up, the risk is a dent formation in the floppy ear.  I have also heard shark cartilage supplements are good.  I message the ear in an upright position to assist blood flow to the area, but not with a form in.  Just let the form do the work.

Using the ear-forms is not a task to be taken lightly. If you want to use them have a Vet or someone that has experience with them to do it for you , DO NOT TRY PLACING THE FORMS by yourself, you will make things worse.

These are a few tips just to show you how elaborate of a process this is:
1. shave the ear. 2.clean it with alcohol. 3. make glue inside (Pattex compact) 4.fix the pad also with glue 5. find someone to hold the dog as it needs to be still through the whole procedure. 6.then wait until the glue starts to show hardness before you actually put the pads in place. 7.The MOST important thing when placing the pads is that one person holds the dog's head still and mouth closed and the guy placing the pad has to make up his mind how the ear will stand correctly before he actually places the pad. The pad needs to be placed at the correct position at first attempt , as once it goes in the ear it CANNOT be removed . So once the pad is placed the ear should look correct . 8.After the glue sets you have to cut the pad to the shape of the ear and make it exactly much the inner circumference of the ear. 9. pad will drop on its own after about 3-8 weeks. 10.After you finish placing the pads the dog should go for a walk for a while until he forgets about the pads so that he does not try to take them off. 11. It also helps to make the dog look for you and make it use his ears as long and as frequent as possible.
12. Alot of chewing on tough pig skin will also help.
Good luck.

I saw it done to someones dog, and then I did this same procedure to someone elses dog without any problem. The person that I watched did not shave the ear and the Tear Mender only takes 30 seconds to dry. Both dog's did not have any problem with it done this way and it was very easy to do. They both also came out with erect ears.  I was using the FOAMS not the FORMS, and the persons vet did screw it up when he did it.  Just read up on it, and try to find someone that has done it before. If you do the forms you might have to do the procedure as described in the post above, but with the foam we did not have to do all of that at all. All we had to do is shape the foam to the inside of the ear before putting the glue on, and then keep the dog's head still (didn't have to close their mouth) and put the glue on the foam and hold for 30 seconds. That is how we did it and they came out with perfect ears.

The suggestion about chewing is a good one.

I would recommend raw chicken drubsticks to toughen up the tendon that goes from the ears to under the jaw bone is part of the system that keeps the ears erect.

The act of crushing through the raw bone is very stimulative. Also, the cartilege your pup will eat is also good.  Do not give cooked bones-they can splinter and severly damage or even KILL your dog.

The viatmin c may help as well.  Ester C is supposed to last all day.

Play tug with your puppy with something the pup can really grab and sink his teeth into.  Put that toy away and he only gets to play tug with it supervised.

Good luck with your handsome boy,

Michele

I agree with Michelle, and atarths about giving the dog something to chew.

I also remember reading something on an older post about singing, or whistling, to the pup. I can't remember who posted it, but they said it really helped things along because the dog always perked up its ears when it heard the "music."

I know this will sound ridiulus to all of the "experts" out there.  But my grandmother who raised GSD's all her life, used to put a tampon in the ear.  It always worked for her!