Suggestions From Those Of You With Greys With Sensitive Ears

[phall]

I’d love hear suggestions from those of you with greyhounds with sensitive ears. Some background information: I adopted Sox last October. She’s a petite, wiry little girl, just two and a half years old. She’s very shy but has adjusted well to me and my home (and my other greyhound, Lucas). She’s an active girl and I just love her fresh and feisty personality now that she’s comfortable with me.

 

Right from the beginning, Sox has been very sensitive with all areas around her head. She doesn’t like having her eyes checked at the vets, and she really dislikes having anything put into her mouth. It’s taken me a number of months of slow and gentle work for her to finally let me brush her teeth with a finger brush. She is not yet comfortable with a regular toothbrush.

 

She’s especially sensitive about her ears – one ear more than the other. She won’t tolerate the ear scope at the vets or anything hard going into her ear. I’ve been working with her on this and have gotten to the point where I can massage her ears and I can put my finger gently about half way into her ear. Recently she was prescribed by my vet an anti-bacterial/anti-fungal ear cleanser due to some crustiness on the tips of her ears and some yeast build up in her ears. This has been a challenge as she won’t let me put the tip of the bottle of cleanser into her ear to squeeze the drops into her ear. (By “won’t let me”, I mean that she jerks her head away and screams.) What I have done, as suggested by my vet, is to put some of the liquid into a small dish and warm it slightly in the microwave. Then I saturate a cotton ball with the liquid and am able to rub it on the tips of her ears and on the top half of the inside of her ears. I then squeeze the cotton ball so that the liquid drips into her ears without pushing the cotton ball into her ear. We’ve been doing this for four days and so far this has been working fairly well. But now, as of last night, she has figured out our routine of applying the liquid (twice a day – morning and night) and is beginning to get fidgety/uncomfortable with me squeezing the liquid from the cotton ball into her ear. I’m interested in hearing about the experience of others and if there are other things I can do to get the liquid into Sox’s ears with minimal discomfort to her.

 

As anyone had such an experience and, if so, do you have other suggestions to help Sox get comfortable with this, or at least tolerant? Thanks in advance.

 

Pat

 

[boopieface]

Bribery, treat treat treat at every step! A really good, preferably stinky never get it any other time treat

Halise

[greysmom]

It's always hard with ears! Plus, one of the reasons she's so sensitive is probably the same reason she needs her ear drops!

 

You can try smearing the inside of her muzzle with something yummy that she only gets for Ear Cleaning Time - liverwurst, cat food, squirt cheese out of the can, maybe peanut butter. Give it to her a couple times without doing her ears so she gets to have the "treat" part without the "ear" part. Then ask your vet for a small needle-less syringe to put the medicine in instead of the larger bottle. That way you can have one ear's dose to administer faster. While she's involved with her yummy treat, gently and quickly insert the syringe tip as far in as you can and squirt in the medicine. Then give her another, separate REALLY YUMMY treat afterward.

[XTRAWLD]

I've had the experience that if they are upset like that about their ears, than it's more likely they have a problem with them.

 

My most stoic boy, the one who was the absolute toughest grey I've ever met, once let out the most shrillest of GSOD's when a vet just barely touched his ears, that I immediately knew something wasn't right. Turned out he had an infection, and I treated it. But obviously, the ear sensitivity means she's not doing so hot and just needs to get better.

 

High value treats are your best friend. Do you have a second person that can help distract her? Peanut butter on a spoon and get her to lap that up while you take care of her ears would be awesome. Or, if you don't have someone, put peanut butter and kibble into a kong and let her work away at that while you work on her ears.

 

Also remember little steps make the biggest impact. You can run a plain cotton ball, just on the outside surface of the ears and stop. That wasn't so bad was it? Try it again in the evening. Then then next day, go a little lower, etc. Every second time you try, advance a little further than you did before. It's sort of the same way you get a dog used to dremelling nails. Just let them sniff the machine first, then turn it on but don't do anything, etc. Little steps can get you a long long way in building confidence that nothing bad is going to happen.

Edited March 23, 2017 by XTRAWLD

[FiveRoooooers]

MiMi and Andy were both initially about their ears like Sox is. As Greysmom suggested above, a muzzle with stool guard smeared with something distractingly delicious got both of mine over that hump, to where anything to do with their ears was no longer a problem. Go in with intent, as she will otherwise immediately pick up on your apprehension. With situations like this, I find that my singing a silly song while administering what needs to be done helps to relax both of us. Good luck

Edited March 23, 2017 by FiveRoooooers

[juliemac]

Sing for us, too, Jan!

[phall]

Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions. We'll keep at it. I'll keep you posted.