ear surgery

Not that I'm a medical expert or anything, but if you want to give it one last try before resorting to surgery you might try the Blue Power Ear Treatment http://www.dogbiz.com/faq-ear-infections.htm if you haven't already. My dog also had three or four different bacteria in his ears, I couldn't clean them, even gently, without them bleeding, they were oozing yellow goo. I had tried EVERYTHING on my hound's ears without success, but this stuff cleared them up permanently.

Other ideas:
Does Copper have allergies? This will contribute to your ear problems, you need to try to find the allergen and take care of it. Easier said than done, of course, but it is difficult or impossible to clear up the ears without first alleviating the allergy problem.

Another person I know has a basset with a neck problem. She takes him to a chiropractor. Often when he is in need of adjustment his ears start to produce "stuff" which they normally don't. They return to normal after the adjustment. The chiro says that the maladjustment in the neck is irritating the ears. Strange but.....

3houndsmom:
While I haven’t had this issue with my bassets, I just had to do this (December 2003) with my old lab/shar-pei mix, since shar-peis are notorious for their allergies. We only did one ear, since only one ear was REALLY bad. The other ear was not as badly affected. It will probably have to be done at some later date, however.

We had gone the same route with antibiotics, even having a resistance screen done on the bacteria, to see what antibiotics would work. Unfortunately, after so long with chronic infections, the middle and inner ears begin to harden (calcify is the term my vet used), which then becomes another issue.

The surgery we had done was removal of the all the internal ear and ear canal, then they sewed the external ear opening closed. To look at him now, you can’t tell he had anything done. My vet did put Frank on a course of heavy duty antibiotics (one of the ones that worked) for 2 weeks prior to the surgery to try to get as much of the bacteria cleared out as possible, so they could minimize “cross-infection” in the surgery site.

In terms of transition—it was not very difficult for mine, since he had lost most of his hearing in that ear from the chronic infections and middle/inner ear calcifications. The surgery just got rid of the constant malaise from that ear. Once we got that ear done, he was like a different dog—bouncing around and playing like he did when he was younger (he’s 11years old.) It may be the same thing with Copper. With infections in those ears for so long, I don't know how much hearing he really has. It may not be as traumatic a loss as you imagine, especially since he will be shed of all the hurt from the infections.

You will need to learn hand signals and remember that you must communication visually with your dog (we forget sometimes with Frank). I think that you will see a much happier dog once you get past the post-surgery recovery and all the ick from the ears is now gone.

I do agree with one of the other posters who suggested checking into allergies. In particular, I would check his food. All my dogs have real problems with corn; once I changed food to one without any corn or corn products, things got much easier. We still have grass allergies, but benadryl/claritin keeps those in line. Blue power is good as well; that what I use to clean Frank’s remaining ear and my basset ears (the husky/collie has no real ear problems, but makes up for it with her Arthur-itis…..)

Good luck with the surgery. It does sound like what you need to do. Once you get Copper recovered from it, I think he’ll be MUCH happier and more like “his old self.” Please feel free to email me if you have any questions.