i have had my akita for about 4 months now and he is almost 6 months old.  he will be on december 22, 2004.  he has one ear fully erect and the other is still down the majority of the time.  it tends to stand up when we go for walks or when he is stimulated...like chewing on his bone sometimes.  when i let him play with dogs a couple months ago, it stood up straight the whole day.  he still sees a lot of dogs on a daily basis and it doesn't seem to stand up as much but it does sometimes.  i read another question about this that it can drop during teething which he is definately doing right now.  do you think it will ever stand up?  are there any hereditary drop ears?  when i got the dog, the father had a drop ear but the woman told me he got it a dog came into their yard and he fought with him when he was young.  so now i am a little skeptical that it could be hereditary. if you have any information, please let me know. thanks, mike

Yes I believe it can be inherited...it could also be because he's teething so I think its just going to be a case of wait and see.I think its promising that his ear can and does stand up.
Archer

it may be ok,it does sound promising if it goes up sometimes....so fingers xd. im not a akita expert but im sure one will be along shortly to say when they are usually up by.
in the mean time try abit of massage!

The fact that it has gone up sounds promising. Generally speaking, if a puppy has small ears (which an Akita should have) the ears go up fairly quickly - my Akita's were up by 8 wks but some do take much longer. I'd be very sceptical about a dog's ears going down after a fight, I've seen quite a few injuries & never seen an ear go down because of it. I suppose if it was a very bad injury it's possible but Akitas don't usually have bad injuries - unless it was with another Akita!

Have you tried taping it? It worked with one of my Mals, but he was a couple of months younger.

Get a loo roll or kitchen roll insert (cos it's curved) and cut out a shape similar to the shape of the ear. Stick it inside the ear - some people glue it with little dabs of copydex or similar, but I used a low stick adhesive tape. I left it in all day for about a week and gave him plenty of bones to chew. By the end of the week the ear was standing on its own :)