 Hi, I'm Dr. Zink and we're going to talk about some ear cleaning stuff today. But first I kind of wanted to go over a little bit about the ear canal and the ear anatomy. So you kind of have an idea about what's happening whenever you're in there digging around. So this is an example of a nice healthy ear canal and you can see, if you can see that, you can kind of see on this model that your canal in most dogs and cats is actually pretty vertical and then it kind of goes pretty horizontal and then the ear drum's kind of way back here. So you don't really have to worry too much about hitting anything important whenever you're cleaning their ears because it's kind of hard to get to that area. Now that being said, when you have a really inflamed or a chronic kind of an ear infection, sort of an ear, then what you end up with is an ear canal that's very, very red, very swollen a lot of times there'll be a lot of debris on the outside of the ear. And that's kind of what you need to focus on whenever you clean the ears at home. You don't necessarily want to try and get in there and dig around and dig stuff out of there because it causes a lot of trauma to the inside of the ear canal itself. And here are some of the things that you can use whenever you're cleaning ears. Typically you want to use something that you get from a veterinary hospital, but it needs to be a good ear cleaner that has a nice drying agent. And then for the most part, most people don't have some gauze squares at home. If you have them great, you can use them to just sort of clean the outsides of the ears. Cotton balls work very well as well. So this is Dixie. She's one of our little animal aid dogs. And she's going to show you how to clean ears today. She's a little nervous, so we'll bear with her. But basically whenever you're going into clean ears, like I mentioned, you don't want to be too vigorous. You don't want to go too hard on them. But basically just, you know, have a helper. This is usually a two person job. They don't like to sit there for a long time while you're trying to clean their ears out. And then, you know, kind of look at the pinnum. Race that, that's this part of the ear, the pinnum. And kind of look in there and kind of get a gauge for where things are. And just, you know, really kind of hold the ear up. Flood the ear canal with your cleaner. And then what I like to do, she's not liking this too much, is massage that ear canal really well. Okay, that's going to break up some of that debris that's deep down in there. And usually dogs within your inflection kind of like that. And then they'll kind of shake. And that's okay. Just, you know, keep your mouth closed. And then go in there with a little, you know, little cotton ball and just clean that debris out of there. You know, if you get a lot of stuff on there, that's great. But you don't have to necessarily go in there and kind of dig around. Q tips are okay if you're not, if you're not going into deep, and there's not a whole lot of inflammation within the ear. But, you know, clean the outside, kind of go in there a little bit. One of the other things you can do is kind of wedge a little cotton ball in there and pour some ear cleaner. And then you massage that ear canal and it kind of works the cotton ball out. And that can gently get some of the debris that's deep down in that ear out for you. Good job, Dixie. See you again. So that's basically all that's involved with ear cleaning. If you have any problems or questions, feel free to give us a call. And that's all we got for today.