RPM FB Live: We are all ears!

This is our Raw Pet Medics. There he is.

We are live, I assume, because nobody's pressing that.

And, uh, uh, Conor is not up, not a medic technically. So that's— there you go, Raw Pet Medics. We're all here and everybody's able to join. Fantastic.

Yay!

So guys, just while we're waiting for everybody to jump on, how has your week been? What you've been up to.

How about— what about you, Ben? You start off there.

Yeah, so, well, I've been enjoying a week away from the surgery and doing a bit of farming, running up and down the country. Had a conference with BAHVS last weekend.

Oh yeah.

And yeah, it was really interesting, talking about the sustainable farming stuff again. That's A lot of pet stuff as well. So yeah, it's really great to get together with like minds. But I think you guys were doing something as well, weren't you? Haven't you got something coming up that's actually published this weekend?

Who, me?

The summit. The summit.

Summit.

Summit.

Oh yes, yes, I'm looking forward to that. 7,000 people going to that.

Wow.

Yeah, that is really, really busy.

Tell the guys about it. Tell them how they can find out.

Well, actually mine was pre-recorded, the Pets Summit. We should put up a link to it at some point, we'll put up a link on Facebook page afterwards. But yeah, there's a whole host of speakers, some okay-ish like Nick and some outstanding like me. Mine was actually an interview this time. I had a choice between a presentation, just straight into talking about me, I had a choice between a presentation or an interview, so I did an interview with Katie, with the natural vet. So it was great. And yeah, so mine's actually done, so that's a big relief. So now I just get to watch myself on camera, which is my favorite thing to to do. What about you, Nick? What are you talking about?

As Lynn Hobbs— Brendan, can you grab the Lynn Hobbs comment just there in pink, about two-thirds of the way down? Yeah, she's on the ball, she's totally on the ball. So, took the family to Dogfest in Cirencester, and it was pretty good, pretty good as dog shows go, and I was wearing the t-shirt I could show you an example, but I'm sure you've probably seen. If you haven't seen, then have a look on my Instagram. There'll be— there's quite a few, 3 or 4 on Instagram. And on the t-shirt, white t-shirt with black, big black letters which say Ditch the Dry. And what we were doing is we were photobombing. And so we went to our friends at James Well Beloved. You may have heard of them. They make kibble. and we went to our friends at tails.com and we stood in front of them and they both got a little bit upset. And so the management from the management, one of the big honchos who was actually really quite pleasant, came along and he said, listen, I totally understand what you're doing. Oh yeah, that somebody wasn't very unhappy.

Look how unhappy she is upside down. That was James' lovely Lola. Sorry to put her on the camera.

Is that from feeding the food? That was a picture, wasn't it?

Well, maybe she's been chewing a bit too much of her own product. Bless her, bless her. So, but, and I said to him, listen, it's, we, you know, everybody's got their opinion and I'm not hurting anybody and they're very welcome to come and stand in front of my thing and say, we think kibble's really great and we think 'we think raw food is really rubbish.' Go ahead, please do. And so I think my next t-shirt is going to say, 'I really love kibble.' And then they can't complain, can they?

It's interesting that you're talking about the kibble kind of stuff. You did a nice post there this week, Nick, on the vegetarian kibble. And before we just touch on just a couple of those points, just because it's so tasty, I actually got this from a dog fosterer there 4 days ago and posted about it. Listen to this. I was out walking with my boys on the hills when I bumped into a chap from the ASSI, Area of Special Scientific Interest. He'd been doing a dung beetle survey. Dung beetles have been in decline for years but are now making a comeback, partly due to dog poo. Who lets their dogs poo in areas of special interest? I don't know. Anyway, he said that there's so little meat content in modern dog food that what comes out is suitable for dung beetles who are veggies. He said I had to apologise to him that my dog's poo would not be helping the local beetle population much. I thought that was great in relation to veggie diets. I also put up a nice video of a girl who was saying, now my dog's a vegetarian, and would you like this salad or would you like the meat? And the dog's fighting to get at the meat. She lets go of the dog, the dog just goes into the meat. Then somebody shared a piece from some morning TV show where they had a couple of vegetarians on with a dog and they said, well, we're going to test this dog out. They put down a bowl of vegetables and meat and the dog went straight for the meat on live TV. But what were you saying in your post about the vegetarian dry food, Nick?

Okay, so I've done a post about it yet, but basically somebody sent it to me. I'm just gonna grab it here. It's a company called Omni, and you know, there are other vegetarian dog foods. I fundamentally disagree with the idea of feeding an obligate— a facultative, you know, a kind of soft carnivore on a vegetarian diet. We can maybe discuss that one, one day. But here are the ingredients: cranberries, Okay, fab. Yeast, fab. Lentils, little bit here and there, okay. Microalgae, fine, go for it. Oats, maybe, maybe not. Potato protein, so you've got ultra-processed material coming in there. This is in alphabetical order, okay?

I was gonna say, if that was a diet mainly made of cranberries, I'd be a little worried.

So next, next in alphabetical order is peas. A little bit sweet. I don't really think that's a great idea. Pumpkin. Pretty good. Quite like a bit of pumpkin here and there. But then it really gets interesting. Rapeseed oil. I'll let you guys talk about rapeseed oil and what Shanahan said about rapeseed oil. And then they talk about soya and I've got a little list. I've just finished Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth and she goes to town on soya and I'm just going to share those with you. Then they talk about sunflower oil, which has been known for years to be toxic, and then they top it off with sweet potato, which is—

yeah, not really.

So who wants to talk about—

well, the vegetable oil things we've talked in the Good Fats, Bad Fats, and it is in Catherine Shanahan's book, just about the heat extraction, the amount of processing, not just heat but chemical extraction that goes on in order to draw out those oils. From the seeds. And if you're not really, really careful also about the provenance of that seed, so it could be coated in glyphosates and all sorts of other products, they just are filtered out into those oils. And all that you end up feeding your dog is effectively an oil which has been changed into an oxidizing agent because of the way that the product when you go through a heat process, it actually attracts an oxygen into there that actually releases it as a free radical in its own right to actually go and obliterate whatever tissues it comes across.

Yeah.

So it's, it's not great to go through processed oils in that way. And some really interesting stuff. Yeah, in Jason Fung's, but also it was in Benjamin Bikman's book on why we get sick. Which, you know, are really going to town on, you know, the whole mythos when we went for high-carb and vegetable fat spreads and actually how heart disease actually increased when we did that because everybody was trying to avoid cholesterol. So yeah, those are really good books. Well done.

It's disappointing to see Claudia stopped in there saying bottomless boxes started using sunflower oil. I can't see why. Why is sunflower oil going in like that?

They don't. This is something that's really interesting because I just sat there. My brother's a doctor. I went to visit him today and I'm there, you know, literally looking at his kitchen shelves going, what are you feeding your kids? And it is just like, you know, I'm paranoid about everything that I'm putting on my, on my kitchen shelf now. Yeah, I'm not paranoid. That's maybe an excessive word. I'm never really paranoid, I'm too laid back for that, but from a point of view of I'm concentrating so hard to think how can I improve my diet.

There is some easy tips there that people miss. Look, there's questions coming in about oil, so we don't want to get distracted tonight, so we'll come back. This could be a good RPM. Does it apply to salmon and cod liver oil?

Let me tell you just something, it's just, I'm just going to give you this, this, this, this, uh, it's a, it's a a death list from soya. Soya contains trypsin inhibitors. Trypsin is the thing which you digest protein. Soya contains inhibitors of protein digesters. It contains phytoestrogens, which has been shown to affect, uh, fertility and ovarian function and endometriosis in people. And it affects fertility in birds, cows, mice, cats, dogs, and even the cheetahs at Cincinnati Zoo. It contains phytates, which binds up phosphate and calcium and iron and all those good minerals that you need. This is soya, guys, be careful. Phytates, and it's goitrogenic, which means it stimulates your thyroid gland. So be careful.

We need to do—

what I found really interesting was endometriosis.

And so let's see if I can get that book there for you. So that's The Vegetarian Myth as well. And what I would say, guys, just for those of you on Audible, both those books that we've shown you tonight are included in your Audible account free of charge. So you can listen to those without further payment if you're part of Audible.

We'll do it, we'll do an RPM on hazardous pet food ingredients, I think, because soy, you could talk— there's great studies on soy consumption in dogs. Doesn't— they don't get on well with it. And so look guys, we were gonna just announce a few things just before we get into ears. You're gonna announce two things. Uh, the first was that we were gonna say, um, from now on we want to donate, uh, 10% of our Patreon, uh, income into, uh, to charity. So we wanted to pick a few charities. We each have a different charity in mind, uh, and we just don't need to name them now, but we'll put them up on Facebook later. But we're looking for a couple of recommendations from you guys as well. And we were thinking about putting 5 charities up on the Facebook page, and then we'll put it to a vote, and whichever charity gets it, we'll give our money to that for maybe 6 months or a year, and then we'll change the charity, we'll put it to a vote again, and just to give back a little something. So you can find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. So if the price of a cup of coffee is what people are giving, or a pint, and if you're into that, that's great. If you can afford it, we deeply appreciate it. It helps with everything we're doing here in the background and planning, but if you can, great. If you can't, no sweat at all. We're going to be here free every week anyway. And we had a second announcement, which was that, uh, the old videos of Raw Pet Medics, anything over about a week, we're going to be shifting to Patreon. So while this is obviously always going to be free for people, it'll be up on Facebook for a week should you miss it, which is lots of things on Tuesday night for some reason, uh, but all the videos after that, we're just going to be shifting to a home in Patreon while we build our website and we can put them all there then. So that's the home for those old videos, just something to give to the Patreon people as a thanks for the stuff that, um, and it's also partly that Facebook are, you know, showing different access to those videos and some of them are getting, you know, shifted down and made unavailable.

So we want to make sure that they're always available, uh, for the people on Patreon as well. So, you know, totally, and it's bearable. You do not need to donate hundreds of pounds to get onto Patreon. So please just pop on there and you'll be able to find all of those resources.

Yeah, cool. So listen, guys, tonight we're talking about ears. You can do half an hour on ears here. So who wants to start on ears? Does somebody want to tell us a little bit about— let's just show us an ear and talk about the shape of the ear.

Do you want to just give a little background on ear disease?

And then I'm going to just— so that they can see the size of this, we're just going to So they can— so Conor's still there to speak.

Get rid of me. There you go.

Hey, so let's make it bigger. There we go. Let's get rid of a few bits so you can still hear these other guys. That's fine. So I just wanted to take you through a little bit about disease of the ear. Now most of us will think about the external ear, which you can now see, and that's the part from the eardrum all the way up to the inner. That's this cartilage flap part here. Now, Nick's going to take us through some really important things because both me and Nick have found so many clients come to us without actually being shown by their veterinary team how to clean the ears out properly. So Nick's going to take you through that in a moment. The other really important bit that I want to go through, so this is where, this is the canal that can get really inflamed and blocked up. You can even get perforation of the eardrum, which is down towards the picture of myself. And those are the bits that you need to really give a good cleaning to, but sometimes will need to be checked, that eardrum, to make sure that it's intact if you're going to be cleaning that ear. Now, the other part that I would then talk about which you can probably see if I do it this way around, is the red bulb that's at the other side of the eardrum is the middle ear, and this often will contain those three bones that carry the sound signal across the gap. But the lower part of that bulb can fill with pus, and that's otitis media, and that actually can be quite painful, give them extreme earache. There are some remedies and things. It is a rarer disease, but again, if the ear is clean, this can be sometimes an important area to still examine. If the ear is red and painful but the ear itself looks clean, so they may need to look down. Sometimes they even need to lance the eardrum to let this drain. And those are one of the other conditions. Hepar sulphur can be really useful for that. Belladonna. Those are really good homeopathic remedies if you're interested in homeopathic remedies for those conditions. And the last one is for the little coiled area of the ear and the internal ear, which is the otitis interna. And that's really the bit that you will see a lot of head tilts, neurological syndromes. Again, it can be an infection of that area and inflammation and cause your dog to be really unsteady on its feet, lose its balance. So I've whizzed through a lot of the conditions of the ear there. The most important one is all about the external ear because that's the one that we get to see probably by far the most. And it's really important to understand that this is just skin which is folded over and coiled up inside a structure, which means that it can get overheated it can get really moist very easily and therefore be an ideal area for yeasts and bacteria to generate if there's any inflammation or abnormality or excess hairs even in that area. So think about plucking, okay? It's like plucking eyebrows, just a few at a time, no more than a minute a night, and it should clear. For those, especially things like poodles, cockapoos, things that are really hairy down their ears doesn't need to be done for the majority of Labradors and Spaniels and things like that. So just have a little think about that. Other than that, I'm going to hand you over to Nick, who's going to then talk a little bit more about cleaning out the ears.

Greetings, earthlings. So I've seen, and Bren will probably say the same, I have seen dogs who've had bad ears for years and years and years, and they come and they're literally producing custard out of their ears, these poor, poor dogs. And you can smell them from 20 yards away. And unfortunately, nobody's ever gone through the cleanup, really simple cleaning process. So I'd like to— it sounds silly because it's such a simple thing, but actually it's easy to get it right, but it's 10 times more easy to get it wrong. So I'm just going to go through that, and I'm just going to introduce you to— this is my favorite thing of the moment. It's called Eco Ears, and we import it in from the States. And listen to this, these are the ingredients in tiny writing: witch hazel, contains boric acid, tea tree oil, ionic silver solution— that's a bit like, um, colloidal silver— colloidal silver, organic mullane leaf extract, rosemary extract, and, uh, fingerroot extract. Not sure what fingerroot is. It's one, it's one of those things. It's an American, like I say, an American product. But I've, I've been using this even on really nasty infections like Pseudomonas. Pseudomonas is one of those bugs that once it's gets a foothold, it's very, very difficult to clear, even with using antibiotics, you know, full-on antibiotics. So Eco Ears is a real favorite of mine, and it's remarkably powerful. So how do we clean ears? What we do is get yourself some— don't use Q-tips. What do they call them?

Earbud things.

Earplugs. Get yourself— oh, there you go, right, a little bit of cotton wool like that, and then another little bit of cotton wool like that. That's all you need, about that much. Yeah, you won't be able to see how— yeah, that's how much.

Okay, just to see, ear-sized piece.

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of— it's fluffed up, it's kind of an inch square-ish of fluffy cotton wool. Right, you get those ready early because once your dog's ear is full of the the cleaning solution, you're not going to have an extra hand to be at start tearing this stuff away. So what you do, I always say to people, it's a two-man exercise, could be a two-woman exercise, could be a man and a woman exercise. Let's not go down that road. You hold, so one person supports the dog gently and the other person holds the ear so it's pointing up to the ceiling, okay? So that you form like a tulip. Yeah, you've got a, you've got a a reservoir, okay? And what you have to think is that we are going to be pouring about 2 or 3 teaspoons, depending on the size of the dog, of the cleaner into that canal there. And it's— and the canal— sorry, Conor, what were you saying?

Pour it in. That's interesting. You pour it in.

That's interesting.

Yeah, because— good. I'm glad, and Brent, because we haven't— we didn't, um, uh, talk about this before the show, so I'm just presuming Brendan does something similar.

So, oh, don't you worry, I'll interrupt if I think you do.

Sure you will, my friend. So, uh, what you've got to think is, if you imagine you've got a welly boot that on the inside has got a little bit of mud right at the toe, inside in the toe, all right, how are you going to get that out? And the principle is that you pour some liquid into your welly, you know, so it's about half full, the Wellington boot is half full, and then you massage the outside of that Wellington boot. And by definition, all that mud in the tip that's filling up the tip is going to start getting dissolved with all this sloshing solution. And then all you would do is you put your cotton wool down the canal that you can see, that's the the vertical canal there. Yeah. And you just suck it out with capillary action. You don't go in, you don't start grinding down into these delicate tissues, especially if they're sore. You just allow it to come out. And if you've got a mucky ear, then you'll repeat it in a couple of days. And if you've got a fairly clean ear, then you'll repeat it in a week or two, something like that. And it really is as simple as that. And I find that to be a very, very simple and easy way. And dogs like it because most people— most dogs hate having their ears cleaned, but this is actually a method that they will look forward to in most scenarios.

Okay, the only bits that I would possibly add to that, you know, great explanation there, is literally with— for that vertical canal, I really do like to use it as a pump because it's a nice squishy cartilaginous thing. You can really pump down that, okay, to actually push the solution into the bony canal, which is the horizontal canal leading into the membrane. It's a really good way of circling that. I do actually find if you grab the bottom and suck up, it actually also brings a load out onto the pinna, onto the outside part of the ear, to wipe away, as Nick said, as you said, without going down. If you do put anything down the ear to sort of suck up that capillary action, put it on the end of your finger. Okay, that way it's not going to get lost and you're not going to push it down too far.

There's no problem with leaving a little bit of oil in the ear because people are going to worry about, I'm not going to get this swimming pool out.

So the things I would say— so we've had some great suggestions on the chat already about using things like apple cider vinegar, great for Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Great for yeasts. Okay, the thing that you need to remember, it can sting in really concentrated form, so you will need to dilute it down. But it's an aqueous solution, a water-based solution. So if you leave water down the ear, you are macerating. It becomes a bit like trench foot. So you need to, after you've cleaned it out with that apple cider vinegar, effectively push out the wet, the liquid form by putting a couple of drops of something like olive oil in there, garlic oil, just so that it will actually line the skin that's down there and protect it and push out.

Yeah, I think if your dog has very sore ears, if he's got a very stubborn infection and he's been at them, apple cider vinegar is going to hurt because they can damage their ears from the terrible head shaking and the scratching.

So the infection will ulcerate them. They'll actually get ulcers down that ear. Yeah, absolutely.

I can only imagine apple cider vinegar would be tough and things like garlic oil. There's a great product on Amazon there, garlic oil with mullein.

This is where Eco Oil, the Eco Ears and stuff comes in.

There's 5,000 reviews for that garlic oil with mullein on Amazon, and I swear to God, if 4,000 of them are humans and dog owners saying unbelievable for ears, and it's that because garlic is just so effective for yeast. It's so common that dogs with yeast conditions have these yeasty ears. And you know these yeasty ears because the wax is always this dark brown and it stinks because it's yeast. You know, people, it's like a cheesy, horrible smelling ear. So it's a real common kind of symptom of a yeast ear.

Yes. So many people will say, you know, well, how do I know whether my dog's got an ear problem? And actually, the key thing to start is smell your dog's ears. If they smell normal, if they smell like the rest of their body skin, then generally that is fine. Fine. You will notice it. It becomes almost like a canker. It's like a sour smell. Yeah, it starts to emit from there. Yeah.

And so why the stuff— is it true, like, the way I think about it is, anyway, in a simplistic way, so you get these yeasty ears, and I always think that yeast is a— I always think it as a fire inside the dog. And I feel like if you don't address the yeast condition, is that not more of a gut flora yeast issue and it's just materializing in the ears? Like, the symptoms of a yeast are armpits and toes and ears.

It's an inflammatory condition. So this is realistically a precursor, a little flag that probably your dog's skin generally isn't on top form. Yeah, actually there is a little flag that they're just starting on an inflammatory condition of the skin, and because of the way the structure of the ear is, it's highlighted in the ears as particularly problematic.

Okay, so it's not that a yeast condition inside from a dysbiotic gut and you've got this yeast infection, it's not that it's materializing in the ears and you've got these yeasty ears as well. Are they not one and the same?

Well, a gut problem, as we've talked about in the skin issues, can be the source of the generating of inflammation.

Okay.

And that the skin becomes a symptom, but the malassezia, okay, the malassezia pachydermatitis, which is in the the skin surface is allowed to effectively proliferate and cause a problem because of the conditions set up by the inflammation.

Not like an infection.

The yeast in the gut tend to be Candida and other types of yeast.

Of course.

They don't tend to be the Malassezia.

That's interesting. So it's not like the gut has infected the ears as well. It's set the conditions that the yeast said, lovely, I'll have it here too because it's nice and warm and wet. That's very—

yeah, all dogs have a tiny, tiny bit of Malassezia yeast in their ears. It's only those dogs who have a sensitivity to pollen or to food, to house dust, where everything gets a little bit hot and a little bit wet, then the yeast goes, yes, party time. And you will get— so if you've, if you've been back to the vets, I would say, and Brent, do chip in on this, if you've been back to the vets recurrently for more than about 3 times for the same And if it's both ears, then it may be that actually the problem is with the immune system, the dog itself, not— and it's just the ears are the tip of the bioindicator.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, you know, you're absolutely right, Nick, because of course there are going to be the exceptions here. You know, we talk about grass seeds down, you know, spaniels' ears. We talk about, you know, swimming swimmer's ear, which is effectively where they've gone in some really rank water, we've not cleaned out the ears properly. It doesn't mean you can't wash them out with something that's liquid, that's wet. It just means that you need to expel all of the horrible stuff, the pondweed and everything else that may have got down there, so that you can actually clear out that, because it will set up inflammation. But where you're getting recurrent ear problems, even when they haven't been for a swim, or even if they've gone to a really great hydrotherapy center, but they've got a little bit wet, they've got maybe a reaction to the chlorine or the various disinfectants they use these days for the water, that actually that sets up an inflammation in the ears and that's why they've got an ear problem afterwards. So just think about inflammation. What can I do to reduce that inflammation? I did see earlier on somebody ask how often should I clean the ears? Nick, do you want to start off with that?

Ideally, I've just got a little story. My neighbours just dug a whacking great swimming pond and we went for a swim in that for the very first time and so far my ears are absolutely fine. I just thought I'd share that. But getting back to what you were saying, I thought I'd share that.

What you're trying to say is you live in a neighbourhood where people have swimming pools in their back gardens, but you didn't want to actually admit that it's a pond.

It's a pond, literally, there's plants growing in it. Yeah, seriously. So what was I going to comment on?

Something about cleaning the ears.

Cleaning the ears? Yeah. I've just done cleaning the ears.

No, we were going to say how often. Do you clean your ears?

So you went for a swim in this pond and now he can't hear.

Yeah, that's what he's saying. Okay, the ideal number of times to to clean a dog's ears for through their lifetime is zero. Okay, it's because ears should look after themselves, leave them alone. And therefore, it's— you've got to work out how often to do it. The more mucky they are, the more you have to do them. So what I say to people is, if when you clean it, it's then mucky a couple of days later, then you better clean a couple of days later. What you don't want to do is clean 3 times a day because you will otherwise induce inflammation in the ear. It's a bit like if you brush your teeth twice a day, you'll get nice clean teeth. If you brush your teeth 20 times a day, you'll get a mouthful of blood because you're irritating, irritating that tissue. So there's just that happy medium.

So healthy ears, healthy ears, leave them alone. Even if you've got a— like, if you're— even if you're— like, your spaniels are prone to it and they go for a swim, you have to assume that there's a certain element of self-cleaning going on, and a healthy dog is okay. I mean, do you— as Lynn Landa is saying, can swimming cause your dog's issues? Like, you know, wait till you see an issue. Is it you wait till you see an issue before you start cleaning? Is that really the advice?

Yeah, you smell your dog's ears on a regular basis. If you think they smell manky or they start putting their foot in their ear like this, then you know that something's happening. And I think investigate first of all, make sure there's nothing strange happening, or a polyp or a tumor or a foreign body. Yeah. And then if that's the case, then it might just be a question of cleaning. But if you have to clean a lot you've got to think, is there something going on with the immune system?

Yeah, yeah.

I think the other thing, Lynn, is with that, just as with ourselves, if you go for a swim, you do a lot of duck diving and going under the water, yes, you can get water in the ear, and that can give you some temporary change in how you hear stuff going on. It can be that also if your dog's gone down, just like us, they have eustachian tubes, so they have this tube that links the middle ear to the back of the throat. And again, if they are breathing in a certain way that causes them to pump air into that middle ear, that's almost like you holding your nose and pumping those ears up. That again can affect how the tympanic membrane, the eardrum, can vibrate and again affect their hearing temporarily. Usually by encouraging them to swallow food and water normally, that will release the pressure because their eustachian tubes will open in that process and that will allow their hearing to come back to normality. So if it's more than that temporary situation, definitely get it checked out by the vet.

Okay, what if no smell but brown shoe wax?

So that's just an indication that you've again got an imbalance in the normal. So we all have a variable amount of normal oils that we exude onto our skin surface. You know, know what skin type we have. And very similarly, different dogs will also react in that way. So, you know, for some dogs, they are going to have waxier ears than others just because that's how their body will normally accumulate any debris that builds up down the ear and escalate it out of the ear onto the pinna.

Okay, you don't need to help that.

And so if you've been treating the ears a lot with, especially with antibiotics, there is a nice little probiotic that you can use. Yeah, let me get that somewhere where I can see it. Yeah, this is by Lucca. These are the guys who do the spray for the skin. They also do a spray for the ears, which can be very, very, very useful. It's a bit like, you know, using a probiotic after your dog's had the squits. Yeah, everything's a little bit wrong, and so you help them to re-establish a really good Yeah, it might be something to try before antibiotics.

I mean, it's like outcompeting with these, their compounds, their byproducts from those little good guys can zap the baddies. That's what they do. And so that's the whole point of using pro as opposed to anti, or giving it a go, especially if it's just an occasional little issue. And you can use that. I think it's quite similar, the ingredients on many of their products. It's like you can use it on wounds, you can use it on all sorts of things. Probiotic spray, it's fantastic.

We're going to put a little link up to that product so you guys can see that, and it'll take you straight through to their website. Yeah, they are more than happy to deal with you direct. And so that's a really good— Patricia says that she's— it looks like she's used them before. So yeah, definitely is the options there for us to show you how that works. But, you know, look, if your dog's been having recurrent antibiotics and anti-inflammatories from your dog's doctor— I was going to say, but your vet— just think about, have they swabbed the ear to check what's down there? The level of resistance we see is astronomical with ears, you know, because they've usually been treated insufficiently for so long with so many different types that you get all sorts of resistance building up. And I would say this is where I actually find that some of the things we've talked about tonight aren't just great as a primary treatment, but they're great as actually coming in after they've had inappropriate antibiotic treatments where you actually need to re-establish normality and give them some probiotics down there. And of course addressing with diet that's going to reduce their general inflammation. We've talked in the skin stuff about all of the things you can add, you know, useful additions, you know, even from the turmerics and things like that and boswellias that can come in as anti-inflammatories. To help reduce the inflammation will help in this. But diet itself, you know, those great omegas and things like that.

That's a good point. Like, if you're getting recurring ear infections, it sounds like you've got a bit of an inflamed dog. It's not normal, no matter what shape your dog's ears are, as Patricia Gatland's saying, and I've got a cocker here as well, you know, they are prone to ear infections, but he doesn't get them and other cockers do. And so you'd use these things as opposed to, yes, you've got to help the dog out if he's sore, but you'd use that as an indicator and say, what is wrong with my dog here? You'd see dry-fed dogs with recurring ear infections. And I would say, well, sometimes you think about this whole force field idea and you go, well, let's just get him onto some real food and make some simple changes into his diet. And like I said, good omega-3s and everything else that we know helps to produce a more robust dog. And you'll find that those secondary— these issues, these recurring chronic issues can be lessened very significantly and then very treatable with your apple cider vinegar or your yucca or whatever. And yeah, so like, it is, it's kind of a symptom, isn't it, that if it's recurring all the time, you know, it's not just, yes, it's a breed effect, because my breed, my cocker doesn't get it, Patricia's cockers don't get it, because, you know, you're trying to do things right. He has had ear infections, mind you, and it has been a bit of a devil, but like, it does happen now and again. It shouldn't be recurring. There's a cause for that, isn't there?

Yeah. And, you know, I've got a springer and a Labrador both breeds that, you know, have been known to have these problems, they don't. They literally— they've had one issue after swimming in some particularly grotty— and you guys have seen the videos that I've put up of Arty going through muddy puddles— but literally lasted 2 days and was cleared without antibiotics. Yeah, purely by using these appropriate cleaners.

That's class, guys. I have prepared a few little interesting trivia questions, and it'll be a shame if I don't get to call them out because that would be a waste of time. So I'm just going to call out quickly some questions. You can all pretend that you shouted out the answers. What is the breed with the longest ears? Does everybody know? The answer is a bloodhound, correct. The longest ears on him were 13.5 inches. His name was Trigger. And did you know that— and there's a few did you knows in this— did you know the puppies are born deaf? They're deaf for the first 7 days of their life. I didn't know that. Just like, no, I didn't know that. Last, here's a question for the vets. What do you call the little tiny little mini ear flap that they have? They've got the big ear—

what's that called? It's my favorite bit of the anatomy of the whole dog.

I love it.

It's called Henry's pocket.

Henry's pocket. Do you know what the formal biological term is? The formal veterinary term? Ah, come on, lad, you're a vet. No, I'm not interested.

I was just thinking of Henry's pocket.

Isn't it such a good name? It's called the cutaneous marginal pouch. Obviously I prefer Henry's pocket. And they reckon it's for helping the dog to fold his ears, but they don't know much more.

And no, no, no, do you know what it's for? I know, I know what it's for.

They say it's for focusing sound, but I think they started— they've moved away from that.

No, no, no, no, it's where they keep their pocket money.

Hey, oh God, oh God. There's only one breed, there's only one breed of dog that can close his ears by folding them forwards and backwards. Do you know what breed that is? I've never even heard of this breed. The Norwegian Lundehund. Apparently much of a contortionist. When you see the pictures online, these dogs can twist unbelievably, but they fold their ears forwards. Check out the pictures, it's really cool.

I've got some contentious issues here. There's somebody— you said bloodhound, I think Basset. You know, I think I've definitely seen a Basset with ears longer than 13 inches. I'm not sure why that's in the record.

You're gonna have to contact the Guinness Book of Records.

Yeah, I'm going to, and I'm going to measure it and send a picture and just show you. They drag along the ground.

Drag along the ground, exactly. That beats a bloodhound any day of the week.

This is interesting. There's two pigmentation genes that are associated with congenital inherited deafness in dogs. The merle gene, the color of the coat, and piebald, like in Dalmatians. And if your Dalmatian has a patch of darker coat on his back, he is significantly less likely to be deaf. That was a 2004 study. So a patch seems to be protective. True or false, they have hearing aids for dogs.

False.

True.

It's just like, why would you do that? Yeah, cope without.

Anyway, I like, I like this quote by Darwin: floppy ears are proof of domestication. And so I couldn't be bothered reading it out, but they actually, they tested that. Remember, do you ever see the study of the domesticated foxes? And one of the first things to start going was the ears start flopping, because floppy ears is not an advantage out in the wild. You know, you want your ears up up and listening. So you're going to be predated more likely, aren't you, if you've got your ears flopping, or you won't be able to hear the goodies coming. Why do dogs love their ears being rubbed so much?

Same reason we like ours being rubbed.

Go on, Nick, why do you like your ears being rubbed, Nick?

Because it feels nice.

Yeah, the vagus nerve runs through them, and stimulating that nerve is calming because it controls vegetative and restorative functions. Apparently. So a lot of calming stuff to be going on there. Does anybody know the name of the Beatles song that has the whistle in it? The dog whistle. Did you know that? A Day in the Life is the Beatles tune, and at 5 minutes 5 seconds, if you play that, your dog is going to get agitated because Paul McCartney blew his dog whistle into it to annoy people's dogs at the end of A Day in the Life. 5 minutes and 5 seconds, guys, and it's one of the best tunes ever written. Finally, can anybody guess? Studies show what a dog's favorite music is. What sort of music do dogs like the most? Have a guess. It's pretty cool answer. Studies show after testing 10 different types of music types on 10 different types of breeds, reggae music and soft rock showed the highest positive changes with dogs appearing to be more relaxed. Compare this to horses who prefer short melodies with strong rhythmic patterns like those found in classical and country music. So dogs like Wreck-It Ralph and Rock.

I think Jude was very close to the fact that not only does Henry's Pocket sound like a children's TV program, but reading out those questions sounded also like a children's TV program. And obviously, I think, you know, having young daughters, it's got you in the mood for asking this question.

I love a bit of that stuff. It's great. I love my factoids.

But that's it.

There was another one there, but I couldn't be bothered reading it out. I've got one.

I've got a factoid. We did physiology in our first year, and kind of halfway through they said, oh, if you put ice-cold water into the ear, it will affect the vagus nerve and can induce vomiting. So what we used to do in the library at vet college, if anybody fell asleep on their desk in the library, we'd get some cold water and try and put it into their ear to see if we can make them vomit.

Did it ever work?

I love that.

That's a pity. It's like when you put someone that's too drunk and their hands into water and they try and wet themselves. You ever know that one?

It's got to be body temperature water.

Ah, it's also because I've tried that many times. Never worked. Never worked.

It's brilliant.

Always disappointing. But anything else to say on ears there, guys, before we wrap up? We're just gone past—

Look, you know, the most important thing for me is if you've got recurrent ear to both sides recurrent ear problems, check the dog for allergies, sensitivities, and all that stuff.

Yeah, inflammation. Just think inflammation. All of the stuff that we talked about improving gut health, improving skin health, works for these ears systemically. Okay, so if you're getting recurrent problems, as Nick says, think about what additions you can add to their diets. And make sure that if people are talking to you about operating, which is where they're going to remove the outer part of that cartilage of the ear, have you gone through all of the other processes first? That's a last-ditch effort, removing these areas of the ears these days. So many of these cases that come to, certainly for me, and I'm sure to Nick, where they've had recurrent ear problems even the most thickened, you know, horrible ears, that actually if you sort out that baseline of inflammation, you give them the support, you can get them away from needing those ear operations and minimize the number of dogs that need those. Lastly, I did promise that I would talk about cats. I would say that other tip for cats and all of the stuff that Nick talked about of how to clean them out works. But I would definitely say if your cat has bilateral ear problems, think about dribbling the stuff into their ears and doing them both together at the same time. Cats actually seem to tolerate that far more than they do if you do one at a time. The other little tip, if you've got a really fractious cat, so a cat that maybe a tabby cat that really will go for your particular tortoiseshell that tend to be quite fractious, think about cocooning them in a bath towel before, you know, just poke their heads out, cocoon them up, okay? Wrap them like a baby being swaddled. Okay. Yeah, but it's not, it's actually just like a baby being swaddled. If they can't move too much, they're actually far more likely to allow you to do the ears and actually far calmer. It's when they can start to struggle and stretch their legs in that towel, or if they're free, that they will actually tend to do the slash and swipe and run.

Okay, doesn't sound like fun. And the same with dogs, actually. So if we— if you ever have a dog that's now worried about getting his ears cleaned because you've tried and you've tried and he's had recurring ear infections, nobody likes their ears being touched at that stage, you may have to desensitize the dog to the triggers that freak him out. So if you keep on reaching for the cotton wool from the same place, take out the liquid from the same cupboard, the dog will get will go, here come my ears to be cleaned, and he's going to start reacting. So you need to change where you keep all your stuff. You need to change the bottles that you keep it in. You need to change those triggers first of all, and then bring in the highest quality treats the dog has ever seen in his life. So it's going to be, I'm taking out the cotton wool and I'm walking up to you, but I'm giving you a piece of frankfurter or something a bit tastier than that. Salty meat that you've made yourself, something really high quality that's going to really turn them on. And then you walk away, say, I'm not going to clean your ears. Then you walk a little bit closer and you go, I'm going to touch the cotton wool off your head, but then I'm just going to walk away. And then here's your salty treats. And he goes, oh, lovely. So the highest quality meat treats you can possibly think of for the dog and desensitize him and then give him his dinner afterwards. So you need to make the— you need to completely change the triggers. First of all, don't keep trying to force the same thing. Dogs will just keep getting worse at it. But then give him a nice treat and just pretend you're going to do it. You've got to desensitize him. It can take a week or so until he's willingly going to let you near his ears again because he's waiting for afterwards, give him 3 or 4 treats, and then any dog is going to break after that, you know. So break could be the wrong word, but yeah, it can be very sore, isn't it? Like, you know, so dogs, they're not putting it on. It's— having inflamed ear is really painful.

Really sore.

Yeah, yeah. So we gotta watch it, guys. We're on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. If you can, we'd really, really appreciate it. We'll put up our 3 charities up on the Facebook page after this, and we'll take a couple of recommendations from you to make it to 5, and then we'll all put it to a vote, and then we'll, uh, what, what do we say, 6 months for each charity. Is that a good idea?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And change it up.

That's good.

Yeah, cool. Okay, let's do that. So, okay, that sounds good. Have we set up next week yet, or are we going to just announce that in time?

What are we doing next week?

Next week, what are we— the last week of the month, are we? Last— that's Q&A.

We're going to say— we're going to say FAQs at the end of the month because they seem to go down very well. We have a very long list of things that we want to do, so, um, we can either just put up an idea for 3 or 5. We were thinking of doing FAQs once a month because they do that.

And well, is that, is that next Tuesday, which is the last Tuesday of the month?

So yeah, Q&A last Tuesday from here on in.

Yeah, happy enough with that. Yeah, that's what they want. All right, cool. Sounds good, guys.

Great, brilliant. Thanks, guys, for all of your attention. It's been great to see all of you commenting and I hope you don't mind me using some of those comments in tonight's. Do remember to join us on patreon.com if you want to, for the price of a coffee, as Conor said, join us on there and look at the past videos. And look forward to seeing you all next week.

Absolutely. Send in your questions, guys. You can Facebook message them and we'll get them all ready for next week.

Amazing. Take care, guys.