Hoss' Ear Dilema

Our puppy Hoss is now just over 9 months old, he's a big boy and still growing. One small concern has been that he has a floppy ear. This is probably partly because he is still growing but also because some German Shepherd have floppy ears, even though the preference is for pointed ears that stand straight up. Now just a disclaimer, I love him no matter what his ear look like, he is such a sweet guy and we have bonded very tightly, so whatever the outcome I will love him the same. That being said, every week when we go to our dog training class, the trainer always talks to us about the ears as does the vet tech that is there and everyone else. So this week, I went to the breeders website and found out that although they breed for the stand up ears, 1 in 75 dogs end up with the flops. They had remedies but they are only successful if done early in the development. Month 9 is the break point, so we are trying to do everything we can to help Hoss have perfect ears. The remedies are as follows:

The problem seems to stem from the fact that when dogs are growing, calcium is pulled from places like the ears to other places, like teeth and bones. It affect large breeds mostly and large males. You can almost watch Hoss grow. So we start with...

1. Beef bones, real ones. We get these from our local butcher and he loves them.
2. Good (aka expensive) dog food formulated especially for large breed dogs.
3. Calcium supplements, I drove all over looking for Knox gelatin capsules only to learn they don't make them any more, so tonight we disguised Tums and fed him a few, they are high in calcium.
4. This is where it gets interesting, bonding pipe insulation (the stuff they put around your plumbing to keep it from freezing) to the inside of his ears with surgical glue.

This is what it looked like at our house tonight and believe me, he wasn't happy as you can tell from the last picture, don't know whether he was ignoring me or if he was just tuckered from chewing his big bone to shreds. Either way, he looks like a man tonight, think Rin Tin Tin. I'll keep ya posted on whether we can keep the dang stuff glued to his ears long enough (at least 10 days) to give him an ear up.

The reward, a big cow bone!

The "bad" stuff, the adhesive and the stuff that sticks to the inside of his ears.

Pretty much done with me, I hope he will forgive me for this...