Hearing loss or too much ear wax?

Piper's mom

Piper's mom

Moderator
Has anyone with your senior Sheltie ever experienced sporadic hearing loss? Over the past month or two I’ve noticed Piper is getting more and more hard of hearing…but only some of the time. When he’s right in front of me he can hear me but when he’s 5 feet away from me he’s deaf but not all the time. I had at first thought it was selective hearing but he really can’t hear me. Today he was about 8 feet away from me in the garage and I was calling him. He couldn’t hear me…I hard to walk up to him and touch him to get him to turn around.
Today I started thinking could it be too much ear wax…his left ear was quite dirty with wax especially down into the ear canal. Cleaning their ears is usually only something I do when I give them a bath…it’s just not necessary (and they’re all in need of one) so it’s been maybe 4 months since I cleaned his ears. His ears have never been so full of wax as when I cleaned them today (his right ear had hardly any wax in it) but no smell of infection (and no shaking or scratching).
I suppose it’s possible he could be going deaf but it’s quite sudden to go from full hearing to nothing.
I do have an appointment with the vet next Tuesday to check them out…just curious as Piper turns 11 in April and he’s getting up there in age (but don’t tell him that!).
 
Sharon7 said:
It would have to be a LOT of wax and packed in really tight to affect his hearing that much. It does sometimes come on suddenly, or seemingly so. Always hard to see this in our pups,
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I do wonder if he’s got the start of an infection in that ear though. There’s no smell but when I rub his ear now he almost groans and pushes his head into it. Of course I’m hoping it’s this but it really doesn’t make any difference. I just want to get to the bottom of it either way.
 
When your dog starts loosing hearing, it can soo easy to miss. especially if there other pets or dogs they can cue off of. My old cat, I missed it because she would follow Gavin's reactions. When Gavin lost his hearing, it was harder to mask since he was alone at that point. I would say he started loosing his hearing around 10-12 (broad range since it was a process).
 
Piper's mom said:
I do wonder if he’s got the start of an infection in that ear though. There’s no smell but when I rub his ear now he almost groans and pushes his head into it. Of course I’m hoping it’s this but it really doesn’t make any difference. I just want to get to the bottom of it either way.
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Zulu loves to have the back of his ears rubbed. He will push against my hand and groan, like please don't stop!
 
Misty has had some chronic ear infections in one ear the last few months. Fortunately it doesn't affect her hearing. I've used Mometamax in the past to clear them up which is very effective but a prescription. My vet recommends using this Zymox reglularly to clean ears on all of them. I don't know if you can get it from Amazon in Canada but here's the link. You only need a drop or two in each ear and leave it. I do it when I groom them and it does work and doesn't leave them greasy like Mometamax does.
 
Yes, this is exactly what happened with Della. It was confusing because sometimes she could hear me fine and then she appeared to be completely deaf. I wasn't sure what was going on, I had her ears checked so many times, we tested her cognitive function and I spoke to the vet Medicine specialist about it. In the end neither the vet nor IMS thought it was an issue. The IMS said she could have a brain tumour that was impacting or swelling only part of the time (couldn't afford an MRI so decided to do a wait and see, as treatment would not be different to what she was on already). I had wondered whether it started when she had seizures, and I did kind of think it got worse when her IBD flared up.

It went on for about 18mths and now she is prob 90% deaf (and also has greater cognitive decline). It started when she was about 11yrs old, which seemed kind of young for that level of hearing loss, and she's 13yrs now and totally deaf. My other dogs lost it around 15yrs old, Tully was more like 16yrs when she had total loss.

The only other thing I can think of, is maybe it's the level of attentiveness. Tully was excellent at 'faking it' and I think that was because all the years of training she learnt to keep one eye out for my movements. Whereas Della, as a rescue and formerly a breeding dog, rarely looks for me for cues, she will watch Kismet and react with her. So maybe the intermittant hearing loss was more about whether she was being attentive to cues or not.
 
Ann said:
Misty has had some chronic ear infections in one ear the last few months. Fortunately it doesn't affect her hearing. I've used Mometamax in the past to clear them up which is very effective but a prescription. My vet recommends using this Zymox reglularly to clean ears on all of them. I don't know if you can get it from Amazon in Canada but here's the link. You only need a drop or two in each ear and leave it. I do it when I groom them and it does work and doesn't leave them greasy like Mometamax does.
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Looks like it is available here but at $75 on Amazon I’ll probably take a pass but thanks for the link Ann!
With all the tariffs and the loss of the deminimus exemption anything US made is just too expensive.
 
I have experienced this with a number of my older shelties. I suddenly notice they don't hear me but they probably had been progressive hearing loss for some time.-- also cataracts which reduces their visual cues as well. It seems that in some it was around 11-12 yrs that I began to notice it.. With one of my dogs (a shepard border collie mix) it was very sudden, he would come up and pester me when I sat at my desk relentlessly to the point of annoyance -but I think he was telling me something was wrong he couldn't hear. We finally recognized that he was basically deaf and it happened pretty quickly. I wish they could speak to us and tell us what is going on. The vet looked at him and could find no outward signs of a problem. Dogs like us humans have the wheesl fall off their wagon quickly as they age..
 
Well we saw the vet and it turns out Piper has a lot of gunk in his left ear (the problem one) and an excessive amount of wax in his right ear. She took a sample and checked it out under a scope…the answer was yeast! So a bit of a precursor to an infection.
She is also concerned about the amount of wax in his right ear…he’s got a large amount in his lower canal that she’s concerned could become a problem. So I need to clean them every 2 days (and a good amount of cleaner down the ears…he’s not going to like that!) and a prescription drop 2/day. Back for a recheck in 2 weeks.
Then we’ll see if it’s his hearing…
Good thing I brought him in though!
And Piper got a few treats so he enjoyed himself!
 
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