Bloodhound Ears

Our 2 bloodhounds play outside and love to play in their kiddie pool. When they come in we try to remember to wipe their ears however we want to make sure they don't have continous ear infections. Any advice to help either treat or mitigate risk of an infection?

[Jaybay]

Dogs with those great, long floppy ears are prone to ear infections since they collect all kinds of bacteria and can develop fungal infections if they're wet a lot of the time.  If your dogs haven't actually had a problem yet, then all you need to do is keep checking the ear canal regularly to head any trouble off as soon as it starts.

You're right to keep their ears dry, particularly after swimming.  One thing my husband and I do is to regularly swab out the ear canal.  In summer/ swimming months, that can be every week.  One of our dogs also built up a lot of ear wax, so we went through a lot of Q-tips keeping it cleaned out.  

Really, preventive measures amount to keeping those ear canals clean and dry, and it sounds like you're already doing that.  If an infection develops - either bacterial or fungal - you'll pick up some nasty stuff on a Q-tip that will usually smell pretty bad.  You'll also know there's trouble if the dog shakes his head and scratches at his ears a lot.  That's when you go to the vet for some ear drops.

So where's the pics of the hounds playing in the kiddie pool?  That must be hilarious! :-)