Why does my dog continue to get ear infections?

Question

Dr. Tannetje Crocker · Answer

Why does my dog continue to ear infections? That's a great question. So one of the most common reasons that people don't think about is that dogs will show allergies as Skin issues, or ear infections, so, will commonly see dogs that have underlying allergies and usually to Something in the environment, grass pollen, even fleas and they will manifest as an ear infection. Where a lot of times people will have respiratory issues. Dogs will have skin issues and so that's one reason for chronic ear infections. Ins, the other is it hasn't been treated properly. We often might see bacteria yeast or just inflammation in the ear. So, if a cytology or sample hasn't been taken, you might not be treating your pet with the right medication to kill what's actually in the ear cleaning is another really important component of battling, an ear infection. If your dog has a really deep ear canal and stuff is building up in there then, even if you're putting medicine in, it's not penetrating fully. So we usually recommend a really good work up by your veterinarian. Marion just determine what type of infection it is. Is there an underlying cause that could be going on? Are you cleaning sufficiently and then rechecking at the end of a new treatment to make sure that the treatment has been effective and the infection is fully clear, but if they're having chronic issues and especially they live here, in the South definitely have them checked out for allergies. That is the most common reason that I see the dogs have recurrent ear infections, hope it helps.

Ashley Bourgeois · Answer

Why does my dog continue to get ear infections? The most common reason that we see dogs get recurrent ear infections is related to allergies. The two more common allergies that will cause ear infections are food allergy and environmental allergies. And there's no real way to know exactly which of those allergies are causing issues without kind of doing a diagnostic workup. So working with your veterinarian to do things like an appropriate diet trial, which is the only reliable way to actually diagnose a food allergy can be really important. Also looking at history, does your dog just get ear infections in the spring and summer and the rest of the year they're okay? That's going to point to something like an environmental allergy. Dogs are really interesting. People we think of respiratory signs with our allergies, but dogs really show us most of their allergies through their skin, including their ears. So ear canals are just tubes of skin that go into the head. So anything that can cause a skin infection can cause an ear infection. So allergies are the most common things. So by figuring out the underlying allergy by doing a workup and using certain treatments to manage the primary allergy, you're going to lessen the amount of ear infections. Now, there are other things that can cause ear infections too, like hormonal disorders and autoimmune diseases, but allergies and figuring out that primary allergy are by far and away the most common reason for ear infections.

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"Why does my dog continue to get ear infections?"