Ear plucking?

[ellietoo]

Could be dry skin or there cold be something down deeper in the canal that you can't see. I know Gracie caught ear mites from the cats once and I could not see anything in her ear but when I took her to the vet they looked in there and said there were ear mites. They have really long ear canals. It's amazing how deep they are. We had a Yellow Lab years ago that used to get the fungus infections and when we started putting the medication in his ear tons of that crud came out. Yuck! Could not believe how deep down it went.
We have had a really bad flea season this year and I saw a flea go into Gracie's ear. She has Advantage on but it was only working for like three weeks because the fleas were so bad. With the indoor/outdoor cats it has just been impossible to keep them totally out of the house.

[mandy15]

The flea came back out didn't it! What are ear mites? Does medicine get rid of them?

[ellietoo]

Fleas will go in any opening the animal has to get moisture. They are disgusting. The fleas can go down quite deep in the ear but yes they do come back out but they can leave droppings in the ear. Ear mites are tiny little bugs that burrow into the ear tissue and live off the ear tissue down in the ear canal. They irritate the tissue in the ear and it causes the ear to produce an icky brown stuff plus the mites themselves produce an icky substance inside the ear. They cause awful itching. You don't know they are there except that the dog is itching it's ears. In a more advanced case of ear mites in a dog you will see the brown gunk but when it first starts you don't see anything for a few months because the ear canal is so long.

Animals that are left untreated for years at a time can actually get a neurological problem that makes them lose their balance because the mites have eaten into a sensitive area of the brain.  Ick. Nothing to mess around with.
The vet can swab the ear canal and put it under the microscope to see if the mites are there.

[mandy15]

That is gross Ellie. I gave her a bath this morning and cleaned her ears extra good. Hey I ordered that harness you were talking about. It looked like a good one. I ordered it in pink. Does Gracie have this one? I couldn't remember what you said.

[ellietoo]

She has a pink Puppia step in vest harness. This is what it looks like:http://www.ebay.com/itm/Puppia-Dog-STEP-Soft-Harness-VEST-Pick-Size-Color-/220699708774?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item7913cd222d