Wednesday, May 27, 2015

#1450 Osi's stinky ear

This weekend I was petting Osi and her ear was flopped over so I could look inside it. Ew. It was black in there and smelly.  Yesterday I took her to the vet who confirmed that she has a yeast infection in her left ear. The right ear is fine. Springer spaniels are prone to ear infections, so I feel pretty lucky that this is the first one she has had.

Do you know how to treat a dog's ear infection? It's a messy process and neither party, human or dog, really enjoys it. First, I squirt some ear cleaner that supposedly smells like cucumber melon into the infected ear until it's pretty full of liquid. Osi then shakes her head vigorously because I'm sure it tickles. Liquid and yucky stuff typically comes out of the ear during the head shake.

Next, I get massage her ear loosen up more of the yucky stuff, then I swab out the ear with paper towels. I repeat the swabbing until the paper towel is pretty clean, ie there's no more yucky stuff on it.

You are asking yourself right now, "What does she mean by yucky stuff?" I mean this black (now brown) infectious substance that is clogging her ear canal. It stinks and it's yucky, to say the least.

After the swabbing, Osi shakes her head vigorously some more. She's supposed to do that because it further loosens up the yucky stuff.

After about 30 minutes when the ear is dry, I put some medicated drops right into the affected ear. Osi hates that part too and a little more head shaking happens.

We get to do all these steps twice a day for the next two weeks.

All in all, she is very good about letting me clean her ear and putting the medicine in. I'm lucky she's a pleaser. She's such a sweet girl!




1 comment:

Kteach said...

Poor Osi, she's so good! I shudder to think of doing it to Lulu, just giving her a flea pill once a month is a total drama :)