We have a two and half year old female standard black poodle named Josephine. We rescued her about a year ago and she has had recurring ear infections (black yeast like molds) ever since. The vet prescribed Neo-Predef powder which helped temporarily. We have her on a wheat free diet (Lamaderm from Natural Life) and we clean her ears out regularly with Corium -20 from VRx Products.. Does anyone have any ideas on long term remedies ? any help would be most appreciated.

Steve Carroll

-- Anonymous, November 05, 2000

Answers

Hi Steve,We also have a 21/2 yr old female black Standard and she suffers the same problem.Lots of black tarlike discharge in 1 ear mainly and she is always shaking her head.Every month we have her ears flushed out at the vets & antibiotic cream is given.I rinse her ears every day with disinfectant but nobody has given any answers.I have changed her diet on advice of another vet as they say this is allergy related and some dogs are allergic to beef and wheat.I will let you know if her new food of rice and lamb is working.If you find a solution please let me know..This as you know is very frusterating...Marlene.

-- Anonymous, May 20, 2001

We have encountered this problem off and on forthe last 33 years. The general concnsus between good vets and breeders is that the black gunk is fungus. When treated with a good cleaner...everything from a regular routine of bleach water ear wash or to good vet products like Epi-Otic....coupled with shortening the ear hair to allow air to circulate, usually helps eliminate the problem. It is worse in some dogs, particularly those with extremely heavy ear hair. Our matron, aged 7 has had chronic problems with this, as do several of her pups. We have never seen it related to diet, but definitely to length of ear hair, and lack of air circulation. All the pups affected have very extremely heavy ear hair. We have also noticed that this is not necessarily a color related problem. Our SPs are all cream/white, but a few odf my browns years ago, one of my blues years ago, and a friend's black have also had problems. One friend says she treated the problem by using a depiliatory to clear the ear of hair instead of pulling it. However, I don't recommend this since when I tried it, it caused much more irritation than pulling thehair a few hairs at a time with tweezers. We have noticed, though, that if the ear hair is kept short, there is little to no problem. Good luck. Mary and Cody

-- Anonymous, January 15, 2002