Poor little baby dog! Grover has been shaking his head for over a week now and we finally got around to taking him to the vet. We figured he'd got a grass seed in one of his big, fuzzy ears. Wrong. Turns out our dog has abnormally small ear canals--like the size of pencil lead. The vet actually had to anesthatize him to clean his ears out, so now Grove is staggering around the house running into things.
Springers have lots of ear issues, mainly because their ears are so long and heavy. They get disgusting infections all the time and you (and when I say "you" in our household I'm talking about Matt, not me) have to clean the ears out often to avoid it. Matt has been doing an admirable job of it, but it turns out that lots of icky muck was getting down near his ear drum.
As Chris will tell you (apropos of a recent comment I made to him), I am thoroughly grossed out by cleaning dogs' ears. It is right up there with sewage pumping as far as I am concerned. It's a vile, revolting, nasty business. And the vet referred to Grover's ear goo as being, "Packed in there like concrete." I think I just threw up a little thinking about it. But to get his ears as clean as we need to, I'm going to have to start participating. *cry*
So our little guy might need to have an operation to get his aural canals enlarged so that he doesn't get horrible infections and potential deafness. Poor little doggy!