Should I shave the hair around his ears?

[AdrianVall]

Hey guys,

Question..

My Odin has longer hair. He seems to have a lot of fluffy hair on his head/ears. I wonder if they could possibly be weighing his ears down a bit? If so, should I shave that, or trim it? Would it help any you think?

[Zoeys mom]

I would trim it personally it helps keep airflow to the ears so they don't get infected- shaving it would probably be hard and not work well anyway without you crunchy the ear and bending the cartilage.

[Stosh]

Glad you asked that, Stosh is really fluffy around the ears too. I think it's cute but I never thought about it impeding air flow.

[Cassidy's Mom]

There is no reason to trim or shave the fluffy ear hair unless you're having a problem with ear infections, in which case your vet might want to in order to do a deep flush of the ear canal. Keep in mind that erect eared dogs like GSDs get much more air flow than floppy eared breeds like labs, even if they're longcoats and have the ear fluff.

Adrian, how old is Odin? Depending on his age it may be too early about the ears coming up.

[AdrianVall]

Originally Posted by Cassidy's Mom

There is no reason to trim or shave the fluffy ear hair unless you're having a problem with ear infections, in which case your vet might want to in order to do a deep flush of the ear canal. Keep in mind that erect eared dogs like GSDs get much more air flow than floppy eared breeds like labs, even if they're longcoats and have the ear fluff.

Adrian, how old is Odin? Depending on his age it may be too early about the ears coming up.

I'm not having problems with him.. just wondering if the weight of the extra hair could be weighing down his ears.. ya know?

Odin is 16 weeks old.. still pretty young, yeah.. His ears were up for like a day or two, but then both flopped back down and have been that way for 2-3 weeks.

[shilorio]

i thought it was that you should never cut that, cause the hair keeps the forign
debris out of the ear

[Cassidy's Mom]

Originally Posted by AdrianVall

Odin is 16 weeks old.. still pretty young, yeah.. His ears were up for like a day or two, but then both flopped back down and have been that way for 2-3 weeks.

It's good that his ears HAVE gone up - it's not unusual for ears to go up and down during teething (usually happens in the 4-6 month old range, so he's about the right age for it), and I've heard many people say that if they were up before teething it shouldn't be a problem. I don't know if that's universally true or not, but it's been true for me. I've had pups whose ears went up early and stayed up, and I've had pups whose ears went through all sorts of weird phases before finally staying up for good.

At 16 weeks old, I wouldn't stress about it.

[Stosh]

I love the up, down, up, sideways, down again motions of gsd ears- ours went every direction you can imagine. For a while Uschi looked like she was signaling a left turn. I definitely wouldn't worry about it especially since they have been up once. And now I know I won't clip the hair out of Stosh's ears.

[Chicagocanine]

I was wondering about this too. I know in some breeds they shave the dogs' ears to help them to stand up if they are having trouble and I was curious if anyone has tried this with GSDs (especially longcoat)?

[VegasResident]

Yeah check my pup out at 8 weeks!!! The one up on down look :-) My last long coat was the same and her ears we still like this at 12 weeks and then one day ythey just went up. Give the ears time.