Protect Sensitive Ears

Simple precautions can help your retriever avoid hearing loss

By Bill Miller

How often do we blame something on our dogs that really isn’t their fault?

Sometimes, it’s all good-natured fun. Like when you, your pup and your best hunting buddy are in the truck headed for the boat launch in the wee hours of the morning, and ol’ Buck gets the blame instead of the mammoth truck stop burrito you downed for breakfast.

But then there are those times you got a better mark on a fallen bird than he did. You know where it is, but ol’ Buck won’t take your directions for anything. You chalk it up to willful obstinacy and resort to “reminders” from the e-collar.

There’s not a bit of humor in that. Before your thumb moves to that button, before you blame the dog, put yourself in its paws. Think about what’s going on. If the dog is a proven hunting companion, it’s not likely he or she is suddenly, blatantly betraying your trust.

For a hard-hunted duck dog in its prime hunting years or beyond, diminished hearing capabilities are often the real culprit for perceived disobedience. And unless you’ve taken the right precautions to do everything you can to protect the dog’s hearing, at least part of the blame belongs to you.

Acuity of canine hearing can be protected. As the dog’s owner, it’s up to you to take the steps to do so.

Hygiene for Hearing
Dogs’ hearing can be negatively impacted by chronic ear issues. Avoiding hearing loss from this cause is a matter of vigilance. Close inspection of ears needs to be part of the checklist you run through at the close of each hunting, training or exercise session. However, it’s slightly different than examining your dog’s eyes or looking for injuries to its pads and nails. You can see a wound on the paw or foreign matter in an eye. The dog’s reaction to such problems are usually unmistakable.

Ears are different. You’ll need to judge whether the skin under the dog’s ear seems inflamed or if there’s an abnormal amount of discharge. You’ll need to get your nose in close to sniff the area, too, and determine if it smells yeasty or otherwise “off.” Pay careful attention to how the dog holds its head and note whether it shakes its head more than usual. Frequent head shaking is the No. 1 tip-off of ear pain or itching. Also be concerned if the dog pulls away or even yips when you scratch behind its ears.

If anything seems out of whack, get the dog in for a vet check. Few canine ear issues are immediately threatening to hearing acuity, but they also won’t fix themselves. Allowing chronic issues to continue is what causes problems, so it’s best to address them as quickly as possible. Besides, if you’ve ever had an earache or felt unbalanced because of an inner-ear issue, you know how miserable it is. Why would you put your best friend through that?

Preventative measures for chronic ear issues include ensuring ear canals and surface areas are kept clean. Treat your dog’s ears just as you do your own. Try to make sure ears are thoroughly dry before kenneling for the night. For breeds with longer fur under and around ears, be sure to keep it well trimmed to promote air circulation and rapid drying.

Soften the Blast
The most common hearing loss, especially in retrievers, comes from repetitive exposure to loud noises — shotgun blasts.

It seems most competitive shotgunners have finally caught on. Today, everyone at a shoot wears some form of hearing protection. Hunters, especially waterfowl hunters, also commonly wear hearing protection these days — guides, even more so. Thankfully, we have options that allow amplified hearing of low-volume sounds, but block sound at ear-damaging decibel levels. Unfortunately, such precautions are not practical for our duck dogs, and they can pay the price.

You know how much you hate it when a hunting companion in the blind gets excited, swings on a bird and touches off a shot over your head. The family-friendly term for it is “ringing your bell.” It earns the perpetrator a stern lecture, at least. Yet, too many hunters never think twice about shooting over a dog’s head.

Besides making sure your hunting companions don’t do it, you should take steps to minimize the frequency with which it happens. First, establish and enforce the dog’s “place” in the blind. Make it a position in which the dog has a good view to mark birds, but is as behind the shooting as possible. So if you’re directly facing the spot where you expect most birds to finish their approach, the best position for the dog is at 7 or 8 o’clock if your dog heels on your left, and 4 or 5 o’clock for right-side heelers.

Optimizing the benefit of establishing this position goes back to training. Your dog should be rock-solid steady. There are many techniques to reinforce steadiness and every duck dog benefits from refreshers. If the dog is “place trained,” providing a platform in the blind that replicates its place also promotes steadiness.

It’s not realistic to say “never shoot” while the dog is out of the blind. For example, finishing cripples can make your dog’s life easier in many other ways. However, as the dog’s owner, those decisions should be exclusively yours. Make sure hunting partners know that unless you specifically say it’s OK, they are not to shoot when the dog is outside the blind. When you make the decision, always consider what’s best for your dog above all else.

Muffs for Mutts
There are other high-decibel noises related to a duck dog’s life from which you should protect it, such as airboats.

You always see airboat pilots and passengers with big earmuffs on their heads, and if you checked closer, you’d find many are wearing plugs under the muffs.

Well, their duck dogs usually get protection, too. For the ride out to the marsh and back these retrievers wear specially fitted earmuffs. It’s the strangest thing the first time you see it, but makes total sense!

Throughout your duck dog’s life, you’ll enjoy its best performance and greatest devotion if you do all you can to set your retriever up for success in every situation. That includes preserving its hearing.

Bill Miller is a staff writer for Delta Waterfowl.