Ear Care and Cleaning
The Simple Cropped Ear and High Maintenance Unaltered Ear
The Doberman is born with long floppy hound-dog ears. This long floppy ear is difficult to keep clean, is prone to infection, and for a protection dog or a dog that likes to play rough like the Doberman, this type of fragile ear is a liability. It can easily be grasped or damaged.
To remedy this, the Doberman’s ears are traditionally cropped. Cropping is a procedure where the thin outer membrane of the ear is cut away allowing the remaining ear trainable to stand. Besides removing liability and maintenance, the ear crop also returns natural use of the ears to the Doberman, enabling him to gesture using the ears and to position them to better detect sound. Remember, the unaltered ear of the Doberman is not natural; it was breed into some breeds that makeup the Doberman long ago by man.
Care for a cropped Doberman ear and unaltered Doberman ear are different. The cropped ear requires high maintenance during the training process of posting and taping the ear but once completed requires little care. The unaltered ear requires a consistent regiment of cleaning and inspection to prevent infection and monitoring of injury.
Cropped Ear
After the ear cropping process is complete, a monthly or weekly swabbing of the ear with a wet-wipe, being sure to get all the nooks and crannies, is all that is needed to maintain a clean Doberman ear. It is good every few months to also thoroughly clean the ear with an ear cleaning solution using cotton balls and cotton swabs.
Unaltered Ear
A Doberman left with unaltered ears should have a thorough cleaning of the ears using an ear cleaning solution, cotton balls, and cotton swabs at least every two weeks, in addition to a good wet-wipe cleaning every couple days.
The ear cleaning solution can be applied with a cotton ball, and after being allowed to dissolve any build-up, can be removed with another cotton ball and the nooks and crannies cleaned with cotton swabs.
During trips to the veterinarian, the inter ear should be checked. If the Doberman is scratching at the ears this may be a sign of infection so the ears should be inspected for redness or excessive heat. If infection is suspected the Doberman should be seen by a veterinarian as soon as possible to prevent it from becoming a big problem. The unaltered ears of the Doberman should also be inspected often for any injury that my require attention.
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