So, your dog has an ear hematoma… should you go to the vet?
.
There are a couple of questions you need to ask yourself in order to make this decision.
.
First of all, does your dog appear to be in pain? Some hematomas, which is a fancy word for blood blister, are really small and the dog doesn’t even know they’re there. Some are so big that they fill the entire ear flap and the dog holds his head sideways and cries every time you come near his ear. This latter case is the one that hurts.
.
We vets learned to tell people that surgical correction is the best way to get a cosmetic healing. This is a story. I cannot tell you how many dogs I’ve seen who have had their hematoma operated on surgically and they still have cauliflower ear. Cauliflower ear is simply cosmetic and tells the world that somebody had a hematoma. Once the ear has healed, and the scar tissue is a little wrinkly, it’s just not quite as pretty as it was before. Not a big deal, especially in the dog world according to the dogs. (of course if you have a fancy show dog, you might feel differently about this, which helps you answer the above question.)
.
The question that really is at the bottom of all this is how did this happen in the first place?
.
Often, it’s from shaking the head.
.
Which again asks the question: why was this dog shaking his head so hard that he made a hematoma?
.
Number one culprit is, of course, an ear infection .
.
And the number one culprit of that? Food allergies.
.
Number two culprit? Dirty ears that the owner is either unaware of being dirty or mistakenly has the idea that getting water in the ears is a bad thing.
.
So we need to clean ears. If you want to know how, I have a post about that too.
.
We can even clean the ears every day.
.
And if the hematoma is really small, it will eventually go away. This may take time.
.
It’s a blood blister in a little pocket. It’s a closed system. The pressure from the hematoma prevents future bleeding and the body eventually absorbs the fluid out of the ear.
.
But you gotta get the underlying issue figured out .
.
I hear all the time how people complain about chicken being a number one food allergy agent in dogs and cats. Before chicken, I would put kibble. A great majority of the ingredients in kibble are inflammatory and cause allergic reactions. There are often grains or other inflammatory products in there. I’ll blame chicken after that, but then really commonly we have beef and lamb and rice, etc.
.
Nutriscan.org has a great food allergy test. It’s a true food allergy test. It’s not a sensitivity test. I don’t care for sensitivity test because all they do is say what the animal is sensitive to today. It’s hard to make a decision on that. If you step on my foot and my foot hurts today my foot is sensitive to your foot. That’s not useful.
.
So bottom line about a hematoma and whether or not you can manage it at home. Absolutely.
.
You have to take care of the underlying issue, which could be an ear infection or could be because of food allergies .
.
What are some other things we can do to help that hematoma heal? Red light. Laser. Acupuncture. Massage. Keeping the ear, clean and dry on a daily basis.
.
Still seeing patients in Tampa, Clearwater, and virtually.