Ear Cropping

Ear cropping is usually completed around 9 to 11 weeks of age. Any later & the ears may not need to stand. You are looking for that time when the puppy is elderly to handle the surgical procedure & anesthesia well, but young that the cartilage is not set in their ears yet.

The surgical procedure is completed by surgically removing a portion of the ear & suturing the incision then placing the ear in an upright position in some kind of rack. Often a tall paper cup or aluminum splint. The ears will need to heal for days before the sutures are removed.

Follow up care is without a doubt more difficult & time consuming than the surgical procedure itself & is vital to the final outcome.

Leaving sutures longer than 7 days may finish up in scaring along the ear edge. The ears will still have a few scabs at this stage & may be senstive & bleed yet. It now becomes more difficult to keep the ears in the rack.

As the ears heal they itch & drive the pup crazy. Dilute betadine & Neosporin can help the healing process & relieve a number of the itching, however it can also loosen the tape used to secure the ears so stay well away from the tape in case you can.

A gentle sedative may even be advisable for this stage of the healing as the puppy may be uncomfortable.

Find out the vets office hours for future reference. The ears are susceptible to coming down from now until they stand.

In case you tape around the raw fringe of the ear, or in case you tape tightly you can actually cut off the circulation to the ear quickly, causing it to die & fall off. It happens. There is no repair for an ear that has died & fallen off.

NEVER try to tape the ears up yourself unless you have been well educated how to do so by your vet.

The ears will stay in the rack for 17- 21 days until they are fully healed & beginning to stand on their own. From here they are going to be wrapped in soft cotton wraps with tape & will stay like this until they stand. Usually your vet will need to check on them every 10-14 days if the pup leaves the bandages alone that long.

It could be a lovely suggestion to have a crash work in the do's & don'ts of emergency taping in case you have a mishap over a weekend or holiday.

If, or when, your puppy gets his or her ears out of whatever equipment they are in, it is vital that you get him to the vet within an hour or so. The longer the ears stay down, the longer they will take to stand.

A breed with a short ear, like a Pit Bull or a Schnauzer will have faster results. Dobermans, Danes, & Boxers will take longer because they have more ear to fight gravity.

Some ears will stand quickly, others may take months. The longest I have known of was my own dog, Dharma. They is a attractive Boxer who took ten months for the desired result. Most take closer to three or four months total.