Chester vs. the Ear Hematoma

Chester, our Great Dane, has a tough time as far as his health goes. He has allergies for which he receives a shot every 10 days. He will usually get a skin infection about once a quarter which has him on antibiotics for a month. The antibiotics kill all the good bacteria as well as the bad, so his ears start to itch, and we give him ear drops for that. We have this medicine routine down after dealing with it for the last five years. Poor dog!

In a recent bout of itchy ears, Chester managed to get a hematoma in his ear flap. It was probably caused by his head shaking or rubbing his ear on the floor or the bars of his crate. (He's too big to scratch his own ears with his back legs, thus the rubbing & shaking.) His ear flap looked like a balloon! We took him to the vet and had it drained with a syringe. It was fine for a few days, but then slowly puffed back up. Our vet had us wait for awhile to see if it would go down with the help of time and corticosteroids, but it didn't, so back we went. His ear was drained and this time the vet put a compression bandage on it. It has to remain bandaged for about two weeks, and then Chester will go back to be evaluated.

He seems okay with the bandage thus far. I, of course, took some photos: Notice the puffy balloon ear in the BEFORE photo.



Hopefully his ear will heal soon!