Poodle ears/ smooth collies

Miine is not an issue with occasional ear maintenance. I have always kept them plucked fairly clean and I use Zymox whenever I have plucked or if the ears are getting waxy. I think poodles are certainly more infection prone than dogs with erect ears, but if you stay on top of grooming there shouldn't be any chronic issue.

I adore smooth collies! Such beautiful dogs.

I've not had any ear problems yet with Peggy. We leave her ears alone for the most part, and our groomer cleans them (and plucks a bit if necessary) every 4-6 weeks.

We went longer between her last two appointments, because of lockdown, and the groomer said her ears were quite gunky and needed a little extra attention, so she warned they'd be sensitive. And she was right. Peggy shook her head quite a bit for the next two days, and yelped once when I touched one. But then she was back to normal. I know now NEVER to mess with this timeline. If we can't get her to the groomer, we have to do it ourselves.

As for a comparison, I recently touched on herding breeds vs. poodles in this thread:


But you can probably find lots of similar discussions if you do a forum search for collies.

Tray Mer said:

I am in the process of reaching out to breeders, so I don't have a poodle yet, but I was wondering about their ears. I currently have a smooth collie, who has ears are tipped, so they stay very clean, which is awesome. Before we had him, we had a rescue beagle/ spaniel mix who suffered from chronic ear infections no matter how hard we tried to keep them healthy. It was brutal! Do you guys find your poodle ears to be prone to infections? (Obviously with regular cleaning...)
Also, if anyone has any thoughts on how rough/smooth collies and poodles compare, please feel free to share! 😊

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My Spoo swims daily in our pool right now, and I use a bit of rubbing alcohol every couple of days to help his ears dry out. I also use an antiseptic solution from the vet in the winter once a week to keep the bacteria at bay. He got one infection after my son taught him to dive into the deep end to retrieve balls ... and we went too many days without drying them out with alcohol. (My dog's ears are not plucked, and quite fuzzy inside!).