Flushing your dog's ears can be helpful when treating otitis externa, or an outer ear infection. Many veterinarians recommend it during treatment, or after a dog is finished swimming to help push water out of the ear canals.
Things You'll Need
- Commercial ear flush or you can use a 50/50 mix of water and vinegar
- Cotton balls
Instructions
Holding the dog's ear flap in one hand, squirt a liberal amount of the ear flush into the ear canal.
Still holding the ear flap, use your second hand to gently massage the base of the ear. In dogs, the ear canal travels first vertically and then makes a corner to travel horizontally. You are trying to get the ear flush to clean this horizontal canal.
You can let the dog shake his/her head and then repeat the above steps if you don't feel the ear is clean enough.
Using the cotton balls and the ear flush, gently wipe the exterior of the ear flap to clean.
Repeat above steps in the second ear. There is no need to rinse the ear canal after cleaning.