Hearing Decline in a Young Dog

Hey everyone.

Bella is 5 years old, turning 6 in August. For a while she has had ear issues, becoming most obvious around common allergy seasons. Over the past weeks they had been bothering her more and more, until Monday morning she had a complete breakdown. Running away from us, hiding, panting, fast heartbeat, and dizzy, disoriented behavior. We thought she had gotten into poison so we immediately brought her to the vet, and they told us there that she had a pretty bad ear infection (the discomfort was responsible for her behavior). They cleaned a lot of gunk out, gave us some eardrops, showed us how to clean, and sent us on our way.

Now, Bella's ears look much better since Monday. However yesterday morning it became very apparent to me that she was not reacting the same was as she used to to certain noises. When we come home and she's napping, she doesn't wake up when she hears us walking up the stairs or calling for her. She can't hear the doorbell ring from the other side of the house. She can't hear dogs outside barking. You all must know how quick corgis are to bark at any sudden noise. She seems increasingly unable to hear these formerly bark-triggering sounds.

Could it just be the drops? The gunk buildup? Swelling? We are thinking of taking her back to the vet for any possible eardrum damage next week if it gets worse or persists.

As annoying as it was, we want our barky ol' dog back! ):

Thanks,

Madeline.

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Permalink Reply by Linda on January 25, 2017 at 11:08pm

A return trip to the vet is a good idea. Chronic ear infections, and it sounds like she has had them, can cause deafness in humans and animals. Did you treat her with anything like Benadryl during allergy season? Max had bad allergies and had constant ear infections. The vet put him on Benadryl from June thru the first hard frost and that stopped the ear infections. I say this not only because of Max but as a kid I had chronic ear infections, this was back in the 50s, my hearing loss today is severe. But as a human I can wear hearing aids. Katie is not hearing as well as she use to but her's is age. I had a cat that went completely deaf. She still lived a happy life..just had to be careful to make sure we used heavy footsteps in approaching her so we didn't scare the bejeebers out of her.

I don't know how much in the way of hand signals you have taught her to go with a verbal command but I would suggest that you start using hand signals with all the commands she knows...sit, down, come, stay..so on so that she learns to respond to just the hand signal. Just in case her hearing diminishes over time.

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Permalink Reply by Anna Morelli on January 26, 2017 at 5:55pm

Hmmm, one of my dogs, some time back had an ear infection that was treated by my Vet and I also noticed the distinct loss of hearing and she hated my putting in the drops, even though she usually was quite cooperative. Because we traveled, I then took her to another Vet to be re checked and he was surprised i had been given those particular drops as they were known to cause defness in some dogs. I think I wrote about it at the time and will post a link if I did.