Airedale Terrier Forum:
Ear Gluing

My airedale puppy is four months old. His ears were glued by the breeder, but they came undone about 3 weeks later. We let them rest a week and I had a handler in the area glue them again. A week later they came unglued again. Once again we let them rest a week and glued them ourselves as we were shown by the breeder. Guess what . . a week later and the little stinger has scratched and pawed them loose again. HELP . . . any suggestions. We are going to let the area rest for a week because the Miles (my ADT) has done quite a number with all the scratching and rubbing on the carpet, etc. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Are your puppys ears too high or too low? How you handle it differs depending on the ear set.

If the ears are too high (standing up too much), go to a craft store and buy some liquid latex - for making masks, etc. You should be able to find it easily right now as people are making stuff for Halloween. Most people have problems with the ears standing up too high.

Apply the liquid latex to the outside of the ear flap. Be careful not to get it all the way to where the fold should be or the ear wont be able to fold. This weights the ears down without causing irritation to the dog. The ears can hang naturally, the dog can move them, infection risk is much lower than with gluing. Once the latex is dry, wait a day and look at the ears. Add additional latex as needed. If the ears are not hanging "straight" you can add a little more on the inside half or a little more on the outside half, and so forth. You can see exactly how the ears will hang - unlike gluing, where you