Question: :My dog is just over 12 years old. Her hearing seems to be almost gone but she is lively and healthy. Your comments ? Can the ears be cleaned to help this?

ANSWER: With increasing age, often we will see deterioration of hearing (vision, kidney function, liver function, etc) among animals just as we do in people-especially if the dog has a history of ear problems (chronic infections, surgery, etc). Cleaning them will only help if there is wax, debris, infection, etc. in the ears at this moment. Ideally, you should have your animal examined by a veterinarian to determine whether or not there is anything down inside the ear canals and evaluate her for her deafness. Deaf animals do quite well and can learn hand signals. On a side note, blind animals do really well as they compensate for their decreasing vision and "learn" to memorize where objects are over time.

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