How to Give Ear Drops to a Dog Without a Fight

Practise the handling separately from the medication, and stop treating resistance as disobedience. An infected ear is painful, sometimes severely, and a dog who pulls away from your hand is telling you something true. The routine below gets most people through a ten to fourteen day course without the relationship damage that comes from wrestling a dog twice a day.

If he is genuinely fighting hard, screaming, or snapping, stop and phone the vet. Some ears are painful enough that they need sedation for the first cleaning, or oral medication instead, and that is a normal thing to ask for rather than a failure on your part.

Get the mechanics right first

Most fights come from fumbling, and fumbling comes from not having thought the sequence through.

• Warm the bottle in your hand for a minute. Cold liquid in a sore ear is a shock and it is the reason a lot of dogs come to hate this.
• Everything out and open before he arrives. Bottle uncapped, cotton pads to hand, treats in a bowl. Ten seconds of preparation saves a struggle.
• Sit beside him, not over him. On the floor at his shoulder, both facing the same way. Looming over a dog's head is pressure and it makes everything harder.
• Small dogs on a raised surface. A table with a towel on it gives you control without a wrestling match on the floor.
• One ear at a time, with a break between them. Doing both back to back doubles the length of the unpleasant part.

The four day handling drill

Run this alongside the actual treatment if you are mid course, or before it starts if you are preparing. Thirty seconds, three times a day, with no medication involved.

1. Touch the base of the ear, pay, done. Ten reps. Do not lift the flap yet.
2. Lift the flap for one second, pay. Ten reps.
3. Hold the flap up for three seconds while you look inside, pay. Ten reps.
4. Hold the flap and touch the bottle to the outside of the ear, pay. Ten reps. You are now doing everything except the drops.

Pay with something exceptional. Cheese, meat, whatever he almost never gets. This is a job where the payment has to genuinely outweigh the discomfort.

The actual dose

1. Lick mat first. Peanut butter or wet food smeared on a lick mat against a wall or the fridge. This is the single best tool for this job. He is occupied, facing away, and standing still.
2. Lift the flap and squeeze the dose in. Do not touch the tip of the bottle to the ear, both for hygiene and because contact is what makes dogs flinch.
3. Massage the base of the ear for ten to twenty seconds. Most dogs like this part and it distributes the medication properly. You should hear a squelch.
4. Let him shake. He will. Stand back, let it happen, then wipe the outer ear with a cotton pad. Do not go inside the canal with anything.
5. Pay heavily, then stop. Do the second ear after a break of a minute or two.

If it has already gone wrong

Very common by day three or four of a course, when the association has had time to build.

Change the location. If you have been doing it in the kitchen, move to the living room. A new picture carries less history.

Add a completely new positive step first. Two minutes of a lick mat with no ear handling at all, three or four times a day, in the new spot. Do this for a day before you attempt drops there.

Get a second person on the lick mat while you do the ear. Splitting the jobs makes both easier and the whole thing shorter.

Never chase him or drag him out from under furniture. A dog who has learned that hiding does not work will escalate to growling, and that is a much worse problem than a missed dose. Call the vet and ask about alternatives instead.

The part people miss

Recurring ear infections are usually a symptom rather than a standalone problem. Allergies are the most common underlying cause by a wide margin, and food or environmental triggers, ear anatomy, moisture from swimming, and thyroid issues all show up as ears that keep coming back.

If you are doing this three or four times a year, ask your vet about the underlying cause rather than just treating each round. Getting to the bottom of it is the actual fix, and it is a far better use of everyone's energy than getting very good at giving ear drops.

Keep the handling drill going after the course ends. Ten seconds a day of touching and lifting his ears, paid, forever. That way the next time you need to do this, you are not starting from zero with a dog who already has a bad history with it.

Ready to train your dog?

Every drill in this article comes from the WorldWide K9 Academy course library. If you want the full step by step system, start with the $5 intro course.