Professional Treatment for Ear Infections in Dogs and Cats
What Are Ear Infections in Pets?
Ear infections in pets are painful, smelly and involve discharge from the ear. Pets with allergies are prone to skin inflammation. When ears are inflamed, they become excessively warm, produce more than normal discharge and become swollen. This creates a moist, warm environment of irritated skin that allows bugs on the skin (yeast or bacteria) to grow out of control. The initial allergy and the following infection are itchy and painful.
Symptoms to Watch For
Pets with ear infections will often shake their head, paw at their ears, or rub their ears on furniture and the ground. Early infections are super itchy, and often, pets will like having their ears rubbed. Severe infections are painful, and pets may not want their ears to be touched. Pets with severe infections may tilt their head to one side. Other signs to look out for are red or irritated skin on the ears or face, or smelly discharge coming from the ears.
Our Veterinary Ear Infection Treatment
Effective treatment requires knowing what type of infection is present (bacterial or yeast) and understanding the state of the ear canal. To do this, we must see the pet in person, use an otoscope to look inside the ear and see the eardrum. We also take a swab of the ears to inspect the infection using a microscope. Without these two steps, treatment for ear infections can easily fail or feel like you’re going round in circles.
Pets who have had multiple ear infections need a preventative strategy. This allows owners to save time and money and, importantly, allows the pets to remain pain-free. Developing the appropriate strategy depends on the patient's symptoms, breed and allergies. It can involve ear cleaning, diet changes or medication depending on the case.
Our goal is for it to be time and cost-effective for clients whilst keeping your pet as comfortable as possible
Why Choose Allambie Vets
Our team of vets has over 120 years of veterinary experience! This means that we are experts at the common stuff, and if your beloved fur baby has something unusual, there is a good chance we have seen it before. We have a reputation for being thorough and high-quality, and we take that very seriously. Ear infections can be frustrating, we will help you break the cycle and keep your pet happy and healthy.
Should I get the groomers to pluck my dogs ear hair?
No. Plucking ear hair is painful and creates inflammation in the ears. Inflammation is enemy when managing ear infections. With a good management strategy, we can stop ear infections without painfully removing a dogs ear hair.
Should I be cleaning my dog’s ears?
Most dogs do not require regular ear cleaning. If your dog is prone to ear infections then cleaning may be part of the solution. We can recommend the best choice of product and frequency depending on what your dog may need.
Can my dog go swimming?
Dogs should be able to swim without getting recurring ear infections. However, some dogs need some help managing their ear moisture. Ask us at your appointment and we can tailor the plan so your dog can keep doing what they love. If your dog is currently being treated for an ear infection they shouldn’t swim until the vet has confirmed the infection is resolved.
My dog has had ear infections before, can I just get some more medication?
Most ear treatment will make the ears LOOK better. It has an anti-inflammatory so they will look less red and an anti-fungal or anti-biotic that can help kill the bugs. The problem is that looking better isn’t good enough. Partial resolution is a waste of time and money. The ear infection will come straight back when treatment stops. Also if we don’t confirm the type of infection we can increase the risk of resistance to medication which will make infections harder to treat in the future. Finally if we cannot assess the ear canal then some medications will be unsafe to use. Put together this means that we really need to see the patient for an examination and some ear testing before we dispense medication.
The ear looks better now, is a recheck really necessary
If we fix the infection 90% your pet will be much happier and the ear will look ok. BUT, those pets will develop a painful infection again a couple weeks after we stop treatment. Rechecks confirm the infection is gone which means we can get pets many more months symptom free. In the pets that get recurring infections, if we don’t have a recheck we cannot develop a good prevention strategy. Not coming to rechecks is one of the most common reasons owners feel like they are going in circles with ear infections. A recheck earlier in the process will save you a lot of time and stress in the future.
Why does my dog keep getting ear infections?
Most of the time the underlying cause is an allergy to something airborne. The same things that give people hay fever (pollen, mould, dust, grasses) cause dogs to get itchy inflamed skin. The inflamed skin becomes sore, itchy and swollen and THIS IS WHY your pet gets skin infections including their ears. As a result, we need to manage the allergy to stop the ear infections coming back. In a recheck consult, once the infection is resolved, is the best time to start this plan.
Is my pet allergic to something in their diet?
It is possible that diet is the cause of your pets irritated skin. But is much, much less likely than an allergy to something airborne (dust, mould, pollen etc). Food being the sole cause of a dogs skin problems is less than 5% of cases. We can do diet trials to rule out food allergy as a cause. These are a little bit harder than you might expect to do properly and I recommend having a consult with a vet first.
