Thursday, April 1, 2010

The Trouble with Ears

**Written awhile ago.  The ears are up!!!  The taping worked!!!**

Well, I lied before.  I thought Harper's ears had gone up for good.  I, was in fact, sadly mistaken.  Her left ear is just KILLING us.  It goes up if she gets really excited, but you can't walk her, talk to her, or feed her chicken 24 hours a day...right?  My knees and her waistline might not put up with that.  However, on the knee front, I'm doing SURPRISINGLY well.  Only a little stiffness left in the left knee, and slight pain if I jar the right knee.  Even tried jogging very briefly when out walking with Harper last night.  (Don't tell Chris.  And, you didn't read that, hun.)  Makes me tempted to try and run tonight, but I have an aerobics class tomorrow morning, so maybe I'll stick with walking.  Harper's up to doing about 3 miles at night without tiring.  At least I'm a fit walker, even if I'm not sure I'll be adequately trained for the race.

Back to ears.  German Shepherds can have their ears up anywhere from about 10 weeks to 7 months.  They go up and down based on stress, mood, time of day, if the wind blows...  You start to worry about 5 months, though, if you don't have consistent perkiness.  We do not.  So, the past week or so we've started trying various suggested methods.  Haven't been able to get any to stay in very well, and have not been able to locate skin-adhesive anywhere but online.  Stalling on ordering it.  So, here are some techniques:

Foam hair roller with gauze

Foam hair roller with tape

Breath Right strips

We've even tried Breath Right strips UNDER the roller and tape.  No luck.  Everything falls off.  Or is torn off.  By a very persistent puppy.  GRRR!  We'll keep trying.

1 comment: