How to Clean a Dog's Ears

Video Transcript

"Hi! This is Anne-Marie and today we are doing basic dog grooming. In this series we are going to learn how to pluck and clean ears. Some breeds of dogs not all grow hair in their ears. It is important to pluck the hair out and clean the ear to avoid ear infections. This is a Portuguese water dog and they do grow hair in their ears, not too much in this dog but some have more, some have less. This is ear powder. Ear powder will help you grip the hair and pull it out. It seems as though this would hurt but it does not seem to really hurt if you use the ear powder and you are really gentle and you just the pull the hair out gently. If the dog has more hair and you need a tool little more dextrous than your fingers you can use the hemostat. You can grab the hair with a hemostat and pull just like this being very careful of course not to pinch the dog’s skin. Once you have all the hair out you can then move to an ear cleaner. Since this dog’s ears are not too dirty we are just going to put the cleaner right on the cotton ball and put it in the ear that way. If his ears were very dirty then we take the cleaner and fill the ear massage it have him shake up any excess dirt and debris and then wipe it with the cotton ball. So today we will just put a little cleaner on the cotton ball and we will just do a little wipe in here. Its okay to get some of the ear cleaner down the canal. Dog will shake it up and clean it out later see you got a little bit stuff. If your dog is uncomfortable with having his ears cleaned and the cleaner makes him uncomfortable you can take a dry cotton ball and just wipe around the outside when you are finished that will make him feel a little better. Never go too deep in the ear. Always just go to the very open ear up at the top the open part if you go too deep you can cause damage to the ear canal and eardrum. If your dog has an ear infection in there see your vet."