Ear progression

I've been meaning to blog about this for the longest time, and would have forgotten if it hadn't been for Gerry. If you've been following the Danny posts, you may have noticed something interesting about his ears.

Gerry certainly did. She recently commented that he looked different now and finally figured it was something to do with his ears.

When we first got him, his ears looked like this (ignore the mess, please):

One ear is bent forward, while the tip of the other is tilted back. I kept telling him to make up his mind about it. After a couple of weeks, I returned home to find him looking like this:

His right ear is still headed back, but his left one is completely upright. Personally I think that way they look rather disproportionate to his head. but all the better for hearing, right?

So I thought that he had decided on going straight (no pun intended). But then a week later, I reached home to find this:

Yes, I know he hasn't been groomed since he came back from the pet shop, but check it out: I've got a floppy-eared dog! First time in my life too!

My colleague, Shirley, has a 10-year-old schnauzer and she told me I'm quite lucky, cos that's the typical look of the breed. Her schnauzer's ears are completely erect. She even tried sticking blu-tack to his ears to weigh them down, but he just shook them off and sent bits of the blue stuff flying across the room.

Appearantly some people also try taping coins to the tips of the ears in an effort to get them to flop down. If all else fails and they're stuck with a straight-eared schnauzer, some owners take them to the vet to get their ears cropped to reduce the satelite-dish effect.

They already have their tails cropped, now the ears?!?

Ouch.