Ear infection that won't go away

[oneobesecat]

My 2year old chihuahua x Jack Russell had an issue with his ears 2 months ago and was crying when his ears were played with, I took him to the vet and she said she could see nothing in either. After a week he was still crying so I took him back and she said she could see nothing in there. He's never had an infection in there before.

2 weeks ago he then started mopping around being miserable and kept shaking his head, his normally pointy ears were sort of drooping sideways so I took him back a third time. Different vet then said his canals were so swollen with infection that she couldn't get the scope down them.

She gave antibiotics and steroids and he seemed to get better, we have just recently finished the course and today he is crying and shaking his head again so whatever it is did not go away.

I'm going to book him in again tomorrow but is it normal for ear infections to ignore medication?

I can only tell you what happened to DH.

Reoccurring painful ear infections. The GP kept giving him courses of (the same) antibiotics. It wasn’t till a different GP took a swab of his ear and they found that the antibiotics they’d been prescribing wouldn’t have dealt with the type of bacteria.

Change of medication and his ear cleared up. This had been going on for months.

Not sure about dogs but i’d ask the vet if this scenario is a possibility.

OP you could also give your dog antihistamines as the infections can be a response to allergens. Also my dog had an ear infection recently and we had her ears cleaned in addition to the other treatments.

Some infections do not respond to the baseline treatment so that could be an issue, there is a good treatment that worked on my other dog - who had repeated infections because of allergies - but not prescribed first as more expensive. It's called Osurnia it's a two-dose treatment, one dose then another a few days after. It is supposed to last in the ear canal for several weeks. You should also make sure your dog is not scratching in the vicinity as hot spots often develop in relation to advanced ear infections.

I would politely complain to the head vet re: the vet who missed the problem, this happened to my dog too. First vet said 'no problem', then on repeat visit second vet checked and found an advanced infection in one ear and a developing one in the other. I raised this with the head vet as a training issue, not as a misconduct issue, which helped I think. It also means vets at the practice are now very thorough when examining my dog!

Sadly ear infections can be a real pain to try and clear. Swabs for culture and looking under the microscope are very handy, also sometimes a full GA and ear flush are needed.

Hope it clears up soon :-)