There you are, bathing a dog you are about to groom. As part of your routine, you lift its ear so you can flush it with your favorite ear cleaner and find the area around the ear canal red, hot, and very irritated looking. The dog is clearly unhappy that you are even looking at it. What should you do next?
There are a plethora of ear cleaners on the market. Which one should you use? We all have our favorites but here’s a few thoughts to keep in mind.
As an apprentice groomer in the 1980s, I was taught to pluck every last strand out of the ears of any pet that had hair sprouting from that orifice. Back then, groomers went through ear powder like crazy, and many of us sported calluses on our thumbs from the hemostats we used to pluck all that ear hair. Fast forward 40 years, and times have, thankfully, changed.
