I have posted before about my Shar Pei Bailey's (he's 3) ongoing ear problems.  He has infection after infection and produces a lot of wax and with this combined with the smallest Shar Pei ear canals in the world he has a lot of pain from it. 

He has been having regular trips to the vets (every 3 weeks) to be sedated and to have them flushed, this went on for 3 months and now we are using drops from the vets twice a day and he is on some sort of steriod.  We are getting to the end of our tether with it as none of it seems to be helping our gorgeous boy so we went back to see the vets last week and he sedated Bailey (again) and looked inside his ears and said they were not any better and that the ear canal had narrowed even further.  The vet is suggesting surgery to now remove the ear canals.  We are trying a couple more things now - putting olive oil in his ears and we have changed his diet too to see if this makes a difference before we decide on the next step.  (we have changed his diet previously as well which didn't work).  Does anyone have any advice?

Is the ear canal surgery really awful?  Would it make him completely deaf?  I suspect he has lost a lot of hearing already as he seems to be slower to react to things and waits till his younger brother barks first.

Thanks lots

Nicky

Did your Vet mention an aural resection - making of a new ear canal below the old one?  If so this can be a completely successful operation that bypasses the narrow ear canal (and the associated problems) and the function of the ear is just as before.

Hi

No the vet hasn't suggested that.  We want to get a referral and get Bailey to a specialist.  Sorry for appearing rather dim but would removing or making a new ear canal make Bailey completely deaf?

Thanks

I feel for you, I went through this with my Collie X GSD  and I suffered so much heartache of making the right decision of what was in his best interest.

He was permanently scratching his ears and yelping and shaking his head all the time. At the time, we though it was only one ear affected and we tried everything before I could no longer stand to see him that distressed, then we went down the surgery route and had part of his ear canal removed. Unfortunately, this was not enough and had to go back and have a total removal. This seemed to work. Unfortunately, a year later, it seemed to appear in his other ear and again, tried to do all we could to avoid surgery, but this had to be done. Before I let the operation go ahead, I took him to training classes to learn hand signals just in case it left him totally deaf.

In the end my poor boy had 5 operations on his ears and he was fine with it. It did leave him predomantly deaf and recall was a nightmare, if there were too many dogs in the park, I could not let him off the lead, but he had a great quality of life until the end. (I think he had selective hearing).

To be honest, we suffer more than the dog, as its such a delicate operation with so many nerves in that area, I could not work all day and was watching the clock waiting to call the vet to see if he was okay.

I hope that your boy is okay, but if you trust your vet, go with his suggestion, I am so glad I did.

Thanks Sarah

I do think Bailey would need both doing.  its so hard to make a decision like that though considering he is only 3 and in his prime really. 

Being a Shar Pei Bailey is awful at recall anyway so that would make no difference! he he he.  I do obediance training with him as he loves it and he is now pretty advanced and the trainer said last week that I used a lot of hand signals which I do - not for any particular reason though just as back up to my voice.  Someone else mentioned that Bailey doesn't take his eyes off me in his class and is always watching my hands.  I assumed its because that is where the treats come out of but maybe its becuase he is not confident that he will hear me so watches me instead. 

Thanks for the words of confidence about the operation.  I too feel sick when any of my boys have had anything done until I know that they are home!

Nicky

Nicky

I have heard this story so many times in our breed, and most cases have shown not to be successful, please feel free to contact me via email I may be able to help you, I'm known in the breed for helping out with these sort of ear & health conditions. email addy [email karisto@freenetname.co.uk[/email]