How to Teach Your Dog to LOVE Having their Ears Cleaned: Zak George

Haven’t you ever needed your dog to be still and patiently work with you to get through something like brushing their teach or clipping their nails? Dogs can be very temperamental when it comes to human handling on such sensitive areas.

Dog ear infections are the number one reason why dog owners visit the veterinarian every year. The good news is that it is completely preventable. The bad news is that most dog owners are not able to get their dog’s to cooperate when it comes time to get their ears cleaned.

Check out the video that Zak George made to show dog owners exactly how to get your dog to LOVE having their ears cleaned. If you don’t want to watch the video, you can also read the full text version below.

Full Text:

For things like cleaning your dog's ears or brushing your dog's teeth, don't wait until it's time to get the job done.

 

Instead commit to several training sessions to get them comfortable with it. That way when the time does come both you and your dog will be prepared. 

 

I know you hunt ducks but you can't bite me, I'm not a duck. Savage dog! You're on YouTube. Thousands of people are watching. Our challenge today will be to see how far we can get with getting Sky Blue comfortable with having her ears cleaned. It is super common for dogs to get things like ear infections or hematomas. And the best way to guard against that is to keep their ears clean. If you just rush into cleaning your dog's ears it's probably not going to go that well and it's going to make things difficult in the future, because dogs remember experiences like that. 

 

These Dog Ear Wipes and Dog Ear Cleaner from Petpost are really fantastic because they don't have so many of those harsh ingredients that you see in other products. And they're alcohol-free which means they're not going to burn or dry out your dog's ears. In fact there's only seven ingredients in the entire product. Things like coconut oil and aloe which will keep microbes and bacteria at bay. That's always good news. 

 

Petpost has tons of great products for cats and dogs. Enter the code ZAKGEORGE when you check out and they're going to give you 15% off of your entire purchase!

 

The first thing I want to do is make sure that Sky Blue is comfortable with having her ears touched. I'm going to flip your ear flap up. I'm going to touch it like that. I can touch the inside of her ears here. I can even touch them over here a little bit more. I'm being a little firm here just to make sure that she's not super sensitive. I want to touch her from behind the ears, make sure she's super comfortable there. Good job.

 

If your dog wasn't quite this tolerant that would be your cue to take a step back and get them used to being touched firmly over the next few weeks or so. This is a great start. I'm going to start with the ear wipes. See how she's smelling them? I like that. I'm going to go ahead and treat her for that. The reason I'm doing that is I want to do everything I can to have her associate getting her ears clean with getting great treats. I want her to think of them as one and the same.

 

Rather than just taking the ear wipe out and start cleaning her ear I'm just going to open the cap, and then I'm going to set it down. I'm just going to give her a treat, just like that. if you've ever opened a bag of treats for your dog you'll know how they'll react, they get excited. They associate that plastic sound of the treats opening with getting treats. I'm trying to accomplish a similar thing with these ear wipes.

 

Open it. Yeah, and treats. See that? She looked at the ear wipes and then she looked at the treats. Let her smell it. These have a really pleasant smell to them. Just like with people we often tend to associate certain smells with certain experiences. Now I'm going to take an ear wipe out here. They're super saturated with ear cleaner. I wonder if these work on people. 

 

That is pleasure. I can hear everything. It's so much better now. Go get your own ear cleaner. I'm not just going to go straight into her ear. Number one, she can't really see over there and that's very likely to throw her off. I'm going to touch her paw, and look, you saw how she pulled away just when I just touched her paw with it. I want to make sure that I let her know, "It's okay. You can nibble a little bit of that turkey." 

 

I'm going to come underneath her chin here a little bit. "Good girl." Just to touch her with it... Most dogs are comfortable being touched under their chin. That allows her really to see what's going on. "It's okay. Good girl. Nice work. Come on. Come here. Sit. Nice work." Touch her head and see I'm going to let her nibble on it here while I just touch her all over with it. Just let her know, hey, when you get touched with this it means you're getting turkey.

 

See how that works? Now, let me see if I can touch the outside of her ear before touching the inside of her ear because that's less sensitive. See that? While I've got some good momentum I'm going to try and get inside the flap of her ear on the outside. Look at her twitch in there. "Oh, you're being so good." I'm not really trying to thoroughly clean her ears right now as much as I am trying to get her comfortable with having these wipes touching her ears. 

 

Using great treats when doing this is pretty essential because look how cooperative she's being. She's noticing it but she's not so stressed out that she's like, "Oh no, I can't tolerate this. What are you doing?" I'm actually able to kind of get in there. Look at that.

 

If you find it too awkward to kind of touch your dog's ears and give them treats at the same time you could always enlist the help of a friend or a partner too. These ear wipes are particularly good for small dogs. But if you have a bigger dog you might need to use a little bit more solution. This would be a really good place to stop for your first training session. Sky Blue is doing a pretty good job. I think it's time to give the liquid ear cleaner a shot, which is going to be a little more challenging. 

 

The best way to use this cleaner is to get this liquid inside their ear. Obviously that can be a little unsettling for many dogs. So rather than just squirting this in her ear I'm going to saturate this cotton ball and then get it in her ears by squeezing the cotton ball. And since I've changed it up a little bit I'm going to touch her a little bit here. I'm going to touch her right there. I'm going to touch her there. Good girl.

 

By the way, there's an art here to letting your dog nibble the turkey. If you have a big ol' chunk of turkey like that you can just feed it through little by little and just let him get a tiny amount. I'm just squirting it in there, now I'm going to massage it a little bit over here. "You're so good." I think she likes it. She's having a great time. And again, let her nibble turkey the entire time. 

 

I suspect she's probably going to shake off here in a second. There it is. It gets in there. It does its job and then a lot of that yucky stuff get dislodged when they shake. So it's super important to get in there and dry your dog's ears out. As long as your dog is taking treats while you do this that's a sign that they're not too overly stressed. She almost seems to be enjoying it.

 

Now what we want to do is see if we can get her comfortable when we squirt it. This nozzle here is optimized to really be able to get into your dog's ear. That's going to be the most efficient way to get her ears cleaned in the future. Another variable change here. She's like, "Hey, I think I'm on to you." Sit. Good. Yes, good.

 

I'm going to touch her here. It's okay honey. It'll be fine. You're being so good. Wow, that's excellent. Put a whole bunch in there. You're supposed to be pretty liberal with it. I'm going to massage that ear. Look at that, you're being great. I can't believe how good you are at this. Check this out. I'm not even using treats. For her first training session, ever having liquid poured into her ears she's done really well. 

 

Petpost guarantees that you and your dog will love this cleaner. And if you don't they'll give you your money back, no questions asked. Enter the code ZAKGEORGE when you check out and you'll get 15% off of your entire purchase from the store! I'll have all the details in the description and the link. Click thumbs up for Sky Blue. She did an exceptional job today. See you guys next time.