CLOSED EAR CANALS
Well, after 10 years of breeding Cresteds - mostly linebreeding - we have run into our second and third closed ear canal. These occured in the same litter and were the result of an outcross breeding. For those of you who have never seen closed ears I thought I would share these photos and what information I have - tho it is simply "guess work" on my part.
These first two photos are of one puppy - showing her closed ear and her normal ear.
The next two are of her brother. The brother's ear was the more 'deformed' of the two and we noticed his first - but not until about 5 weeks of age.
Besides the obvious lack of an opening to the inner ear, another very outward sign is the difference in size of the ears. Below are photos of a normal sized ear and photos of the two closed ears. Note how much of the ear is missing!!
.....
Our vet asked about doing surgery to open the ear canals on the puppies and we agreed to give it a try. He found nothing at all on the girl puppy and simply stitched her opening back up. On the boy puppy he found an ear canal and we worked at keeping the ear open - in the hopes that he would have normal hearing. When BAER tested it showed that the puppy was deaf in the ear that had had the closed ear canal and we have decided to let the opening close again naturally. There is no need to keep it open - and prone to infection - when it serves no purpose. In the future, should we ever have another with this problem, we will not be doing the surgery.........as in all liklihood there would be no hearing anyway.
These photos are of the puppy after the surgery - showing the man-made opening.
.....
Below is a photo of one of the puppies with the remnants of "face flaps" clearly marked. BOTH of these puppies had numerous flaps - some quite large and some very, very tiny. These ranged over the entire face but mostly from the corner of the mouth up to and including the ears. We noticed these when dewclaws were removed - and most of the flaps were removed at the same time. It is MY opinion that there is a connection between these flaps and closed ear canals/deafness. Only time, and unfortunately more deformned puppies, will tell if I am correct.
Please use your "BACK" button to return to the page you were on...............
Where would you like to go now?
