Shih Tzu (detailed introduction) 　

　　Mentioning plucking ear hair feels like a rather painful affair! Because the dog will inevitably feel a lot of pain when its ear hair is plucked, it won’t obediently let you do it. At this time, we should first prepare the tools: a pair of hemostatic forceps and ear powder. The forceps can firmly clamp the ear hair so it never slips off. Ear powder is a very fine white powder, and you will find that a newly bought bottle of ear powder is also very light, precisely because the powder is extremely fine. It contains mint and anti-inflammatory ingredients which can help reduce the pain when plucking the dog’s ear hair.

　　Step one of plucking ear hair: Squeeze the ear powder into the Shih Tzu’s ear. Before squeezing ear powder into the Shih Tzu’s ear, you need to try squeezing some on your own hand first, to get a feel for how much force is needed and how much powder comes out. Because once the narrow tip of the ear powder bottle is inserted into the Shih Tzu’s ear canal, you won’t be able to see it at all. You can squeeze in a bit more ear powder — after all, once you’re done plucking, the dog will definitely shake its head and fling out the ear powder.

　　The posture for plucking a Shih Tzu’s ear hair is very important; you can’t let it move around randomly, but it also shouldn’t feel uncomfortable. My Shih Tzu is relatively large, so I can let it rest its front legs on me, then I clamp its body between my two legs so the operation is more stable. If your dog is smaller or bigger, you’ll need to figure out what posture works best. Small dogs can be placed on a table and controlled with your arms; you might also need someone’s help.

　　Step two of plucking ear hair: Massage the base of the Shih Tzu’s ear. Since Shih Tzus are floppy-eared dogs, lift its ear and let the ear base reach as deeply into the ear as possible, then massage the ear base to allow the ear powder to fully contact the inside of the ear and have a numbing effect.

　　Step three of plucking ear hair: start plucking. Sounds terrifying, right? Actually, I also had no idea at first, but after plucking a little and feeling it, it didn’t seem so scary, so I just went ahead and plucked.

　　Usually people think pulling from the root might hurt less, so I also tried to use the hemostatic forceps to clamp as close to the root as possible when plucking, but I often clamped the skin inside the ear by mistake. That’s when I realized why professionals don’t really pull hair from the roots when plucking ear hair. You should also be very careful. The ear hair pulled from the Shih Tzu’s ear shows that there is still a lot inside the ear. Especially the brown tuft, which is stuck together by secretions inside the ears of Huskies (detailed introduction). Over time, the dog’s ear will get inflamed. The white hairs, which grow denser near the outer part of the ear canal, also block secretions from being shaken out. After plucking all these hairs, the Shih Tzu’s ears feel much fresher.