Hello I'm Doctor Mike. This is Mandy, and this is Cookie. And today, we want to teach
you how to clean your pet's ears properly. And to do this, we need to get in the habit
of looking into our pets' ears. We need to determine what is normal so that if we see
changes, such as wax, or debris, or inflammation, or even an abnormal smell. These may be signs
of an infection. If your pet does have an infection, your veterinarian will actually
prescribe a very specific treatment plan, and maybe even a specific cleaner for you
to go home and use as a maintenance. If there is no infection and you want to go ahead and
work with a routine cleaning, this is really simple. So to get started, we're going to
need an ear cleaner. There are many types of ear cleaners, both over the counter and
there's also prescription ones. So once we have our cleaner, we can go ahead and pick
something like a cotton ball, you can use a soft tissue, whatever it is that's easy
and gentle on the ears. So we want to apply our cleaner, and we'll go ahead and lift the
earflap, also known as the ear pinna. And we want to clean just in the top areas, the
areas that we can see, and so just wiping in here and cleaning. We don't want to do
routine cleaning down in the canal, you don't ever want to stick an instrument, don't use
q-tips. Sometimes your pet may actually have an infection, and it may require a deeper
cleaning. Now we need to be careful when we're pouring a solution down into the canal, as
this could be damaging if there is a problem with the eardrum, like if the eardrum is ruptured,
and that can happen. So your only going to do a deeper cleaning at the advice and direction
of your veterinarian. So to get started, again, we want to lift up the earflap, and we're
going to go ahead and just flush a little solution down there, and then we can go ahead
and massage the canal gently. And then, I'll let them go ahead and shake their head, so
it's a good idea to maybe do this outside, and after, again I will grab the cotton ball,
and this time I don't need to saturate it because all the solution is here. Just going
to clean what's up here. Once again, don't use a q-tip, no instruments down into the
canal at any time. And this is pretty simple and you can do this at home on a routine basis,
whether it's weekly or twice a month, and again at the advice of your veterinarian.
So whether you're doing a routine ear cleaning or a deeper ear flush, it's very simple as
long as you're following the necessary precautions. I hope that this information was helpful to
you today, and thank you for watching.