Welcome to our first ever blog post, the aim of this blog is to keep in touch with you, our clients and fellow pet lovers with all the up to date comings and goings of Barnsley Vets4Pets. We will share our knowledge with you to provide hints and tips on keeping your pets healthy and happy. If you have a topic you would like us to post about just let us know and we'll do our best to please :-)
Lets get started with ears, a strange topic you might think but ear problems are certainly in the top list of reasons why you guys seek our help for your pets.
There are many different problems that can arise with ears such as infection, haematomas, parasite infestations and so on.
The good news is, that for the most part these problems can be prevented!!! But how?
1. some breeds have hair that grows inside of the ear, this poses a problem as it provides the ideal environment for bacteria to hide out and multiply. To prevent this we recommend having the hair plucked on a regular basis.
Here is an example of what we're talking about.
After de-fluffing ;-)
2. Cleaners - As well as removing hair from your pets ears it's a good idea to use an ear cleaner on a regular basis, this gets rid of wax build up... again some breeds are prone to this and no one knows this better than our nurse Hayley who some of you will know is the mum of Dobby the Sphynx cat. Dobby's ears get very dirty very quickly and so Hayley cleans them at least twice weekly with a liquid ear cleaner. Here are some before and after photos.
Before :-(
After :-)
3. Foreign Body - If your pet seems even slightly irritated by their ears come and see the vet. On a daily basis you never think of your ears and neither do our pets... until something is irritating them and then it seems it's all you or they can think about. It's normal to have the odd itch but get used to what your pet does as 'normal' and as soon as this changes get it checked out. Often your pets sudden irritation with their ears is a sign that something's not quite right, such as an infection starting or even something like a foreign body such as a grass seed.
Can you imagine how painful/irritating this would be?!
4. Allergies - ear problems can be caused by skin allergies, when the skin becomes inflamed and painful. This can then lead to infection and if left untreated or in severe chronic cases the ear canal can become what we call stenotic (narrowed).
This stenotic ear canal improves the living conditions for bacteria as it is warm and hard to reach with ear cleaners/treatments. It's important to not only seek help for the initial allergy but also monitor your pets ears and seek medical attention as soon as your pet is having a 'flare up'.
:-( as you can see here, there is hardly any ear canal = 5 star accommodation for bacteria and other nasty organisms.
5. Pendulous ears - breeds that have the floppy down ears vs pointy ears (very technical wording I know) are more prone to ear infections. This is due to if the ear gets wet it doesn't easily dry out. I know people who use a hair scruncie to tie their dogs ears up on an evening to allow air flow :-)
6. Swimming - for the same reasons as above, plus the microscopic contents of water, pets who like to swim can often find themselves with ear infections. Our advice, use an ear cleaner every time after your pet has been swimming.
We hope you have found our first post helpful and if you have any questions at all please contact us on 01226 289000.
Thanks guys, see you soon.
