If you have access to a source for Skin Bond ask them about a product made by the same manufacturer that is called Skin Prep. It is a small pad, individually wrapped in a foil packet with twenty-five packets to a box. Use one pad to do both ears. It applies as a liquid but quickly dries to an invisible protective coating on the skin inside the ear.  Go way down into the ear base.  Allow to dry for one minute and then apply the Skin Prep and the ear peg of your personal choice. Apply Neo-Predef powder to the backside (hair side) of the ears, making sure to cover the pocket near the base. Now use a roll of gauze to wrap the entire ear, if your puppy has allergies to tape, from the base to almost the tip. Then apply overlapping strips of tape. If you still have reaction problems to the ear tape, use vet wrap instead of tape to cover the gauze completely. Make sure you catch a small bit of skin and hair near the base and at the tip so the gauze doesn’t go flying when the pup shakes it’s head.  With this method you will never have any of those nasty oozing tape reactions or blisters in the bases of the ears or anywhere else on the ears again.

submitted courtesy of Noreen DePalma, USA

With all the talk about taping ears—I thought I’d pass along the method I use to roll the ears.  After reading about the duct tape around the caulking and the tampon method, I feel that perhaps this method may help some that are having problems with the other methods.

For newly cropped puppies take a sheet of Bounty paper towel (Bounty because it is thicker and absorbent).  Fold the sheet into quarters and then take the square of paper towel and on a table begin to TIGHTLY roll the paper towel into a tube.  Then take the tape (I use a silky cloth tape by 3M called Durapore in one inch size which is quite sticky) and secure the roll about one inch from the bottom of the tube of paper.  Tape it around, then flip the roll around and keeping the roll tight and the tape pulled taut, work up the roll, tape side out, to the top, then down again.  Usually taping the roll up and then down the tube will be enough to stiffen the tube.

Then I use a product called Skin Bond by Smith & Nephew (1-800-876-1261) which is a natural rubber adhesive used for “stomas” from colostomy’s and illiostomy’s.  It is a white glue that you will thinly brush on the inside of the ear.  Blow on the glue to dry it slightly and thus make it tacky, then insert the taped tube into the ear with the one inch of exposed paper towel, to act like a “wick” end, as far as possible into the ear canal.  Then squeeze the ear around the tube to make sure the ear/glue is in good contact.  After that, proceed to take your strips of tape, starting at the base and proceed to tape according to Carol Petruzzo’s method on the pages: Part 1 and Part 2

The use of the glue prevents the puppy from popping the tubes out of the bottom of the ears.  On older puppies use one and one/half paper towels rolled into a tube.  It is simply a thicker tube for the larger ear. The glue can be used with tampons and the tubing but the paper towel (Bounty) does a great job with the ears and does it cheaply.  Give it a try.

Theresa Mullen, Terrylane, USA