Ear Mites in Dogs

Hey, guys. My name is Dr. Laird here at Heron Lakes Animal Hospital. Today I am here with this adorable little puppy. We don't have a name for him just yet. We got him less than 24 hours ago. He is a Maltese, and he is coming in because he is shaking his head and scratching his ears a lot. And you'd wonder, man, did the breeder sell me a dog with an ear infection? And so the most common thing that normally I would expect for a puppy who is starting to have waxy discharge and itchiness of the ears and that kind of stuff and scratching is typically going to be ear mites. So it sounds a lot grosser than it really is, and it looks kind of gross on the tv. And if you get grossed out by your. By insects, you'll get grossed out. Ginger actually had this. My wife diagnosed her. I was not in agreement. I said, just give her some time. Maybe she's just scratching ears. We picked her up on a Saturday. Next thing Monday, I checked the ears. She had ear mites. My wife said she could be a veterinarian, too. I was not happy about her being right, but that's a whole other story. This particular puppy does have ear mites as well. And so the way that we typically will diagnose it is we will go ahead and look in the ears with what we call our video otoscope, which I think you guys may have seen in the past. And so this is a camera that goes into the earth and then puts it up on the TV screen. You guys, Abraham will pan over to there when we have the insects up. It is something that is typically itchy. It is something that does produce a lot of wax. It is something that is very easily treated. Typically, we'll have some ear mite medication, some drops that you put in the ears. You repeat it in one week, and usually they're good to go. If that's the biggest problem that your dog has or that your puppy has, as a puppy, that is the easiest thing of all, trust me. So we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna take a look at the earmites. You're not gonna see that many of them. And one thing that I want you guys to know, and obviously this is a little note for Abraham as well. When I go into the ear, especially with the camera, what will happen sometimes is the camera will start to fog up because there's some humidity on there. So we're gonna try. And we're not gonna get a ton of ear mites on the camera. You're gonna see just some creepy crawlies in there. They're kind of white and you'll see them moving. So let's see here. All right. All right, Ready? All right, here we go. Abraham, if you want to pan over to the TV and actually you guys see them moving right there, they look like little crowds and that kind of stuff. So he's got a decent amount of them, and so that's what ear mites look like. They're going to be more so in the inside rather than on the outside. In a later part of this video or another video, we may actually have a clip of what they look like underneath the microscope. So if you guys have any questions about this particular topic, leave it in the comment box. If you found this video helpful, give us a thumbs up. Subscribe, and if you know somebody who needs to see this, share it with them. Thanks a lot for watching and have a great day.