Dog Ear Infection

Ear mites are parasites that cause intense irritation to a pet’s ear canal. This often leads to a secondary ear infection by yeast or bacteria.

This silent video shows a magnified view of ear mites and mites eggs found in a sample of cat ear wax.

These same ear mites can also infest your dog.

Ear mites are highly contagious and is passed from pet to pet through direct contact.

Keep these parasites away to prevent dog ear infection.

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One of the many causes of dog ear infection is ear mites infestation.

Ear mites are parasites. They are too tiny to be seen by the naked eyes. Ear mites are detected by a microscopic examination of a sample of the dog’s ear wax. The ear mite looks like a microscopic tick, and appears as a small white dot.

Ear mites infection is more commonly found in cats. But any furry animal, such as dogs, rabbits, ferrets can aslo get ear mites.

Ear mites are highly contagious, and is passed from pet to pet by direct contact. Sometimes, an adult dog gets the mites when a new kitten or puppy with mites is introduced into the household. The dog can also get ear mites from other furry pets it socializes with.

Ear mites can migrate from inside the ear to the pet’s face, head, feet, or tail.

Here are some symptoms of ear mites infestation:

• Intense scratching or head shaking
• Ear discharge looks like coffee grounds.
• Itchy skin around ears, head, neck
• Ear infection
• Thick crust around outer ear
• Possible crust and scales on neck, rump, and tail

The ear mites have a life span of 8 weeks. They feed on ear wax and skin oils inside the ear. The ear mites also dig tunnels underneath the skin lining of the ear canal. They lay eggs in the tunnels, and these eggs hatches after just 4 days of incubation.

If you can picture thousands of these mites crawling inside the ear and digging into the skin of the ear canal, you would understand why a dog with ear mites scratches and shakes its head vigourously.

The dog feels intense itch and pain. The irritation builds up ear wax and the broken skin in the ear resutls in secondary infection by bacteria and yeast.

As with any treatment for dog ear infection, it starts with ear cleaning. The ear must be cleaned so that the medicine can actually come in contact with the diseased skin.
Many over-the-counter products for ear mites consist of insecticide in an oily base. If the ear is already sore and inflamed due to bacteria and yeast infection, the insecticide
oily base treatment would be inadequate.

You need a remedy that can kill the mites, the mite eggs, treat the bacteria and fungal infections, and also reduce the inflammation of the ear.

Consult your veterinarian for an accurate diagnosis of the dog ear infection. Knowing the cause of the infection will help you to make intelligent decisions about its treatment options.

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