My first attempt at posting my Doberman’s ears. Atlas has been on the same ear posts since the day he left his home in Northern California.
While my breeder showed me how to do it and allowed me to film the process, I am on my own on this one. Part of owning a Doberman puppy with cropped ears is keeping them posted. That sounds easy enough except that their ear posts must be changed every week to two weeks. If you live close to your breeder, you can easily have them re-post for you. If you are far from your breeder, but live close to an veterinarian who is experienced with ear cropping, they can do it for you.
What if neither is an option?
In that case, you’ll need to post your Doberman puppy’s ears yourself, like I did. Fortunately, Tony at West Coast Doberman Ranch showed me how to post the ears and he allowed me to film the process. He used the zip tie ear posting method.
Removing Ear Posts and Cleaning Ears
Before I re-posted Atlas’ ears, I carefully removed them by soaking his ears with spray alcohol and letting it sit for at least two minutes. This loosen up the porous cloth tapes. After two minutes, the porous tapes peels right off, leaving some adhesive residue behind. I sprayed the sticky residue with alcohol spray, allowed it to soak, and rubbed them off with my thumbs.
The old posts were removed and I continued to spray Atlas’ ear with the alcohol spray to clean them. I must admit, his ears smelled unpleasant. After cleaning them, it was time to give Atlas a bath. I use Pro Pet Works All Natural Organic Oatmeal Pet Shampoo Plus Conditioner and thoroughly cleaned Atlas; paws, snout, face and everything. I thoroughly dried Atlas with a towel and then let him air dry for about 10 minutes before proceeding.
Re-using Existing Posts
If your puppy’s ears haven’t outgrown the existing posts, you can re-use the posts like I did. But I had to remove the surgical tape, clean and disinfect the zip ties and then re-tape them with new surgical tape.
This is the result of my first attempt at posting my Doberman’s ears. What do you think? Not too shabby in my opinion!
I will write a detailed guide explaining the ear posting process. There are many methods to ear posting, some involving a Styrofoam cup (for long crops). The process I learned applies to medium ear crops, is simple and uses heavy duty cable zip ties sandwiched between surgical tapes as the main ear posts.