Bullmastiff Puppy Ear Taping

About Bullmastiff Puppy ears:

Hello from Sunrayz! We hope everything is going well with your puppy. All puppies go through a period of puppy teething, and during this time it is not unusual for a Bullmastiff puppy to start holding his or her ears folded enough of the time that, they stop laying correctly. If your puppy's ears are laying incorrectly, they will require taping to correct the ear carriage. Its important that this is done while the puppies are in the age-range that the ear cartilage is still "malleable", as the cartilage usually begins to "set" around 5-6 months of age. Once the cartilage has set, a "fly-away" ear may not be correctable. To better explain the "fly-away" ear and the taping procedures, I've taken some pictures of Elly, whose ears are currently folding. Shown below are two photos--in both Elly is sitting facing the camera. In the photo on the left, her ears are still okay (the photo was taken a few weeks prior to the "fly-away" stage) and look like two upside-down triangles. In the photo on the right, taken later, Elly's ears are folded and are in the fly-away position and no longer triangular in shape. Do your puppy's ears look like this?

Here are two more photos to illustrate ear folding. In the photo on the right, you can see the ear is folded in at the outer corner. Compare that to the photo on the left where the ear is in the correct position and is not folded. All bullmastiffs fold their ears in this way when they pull their ears back while being submissive, or wagging, or playing, but the problem is when the ear remains folded, and in this position even when the Bullmastiff puppy has an alert or relaxed expression.



	The photo at right shows Elly with one "good" ear and one "fly-away" ear (good on left of photo, fly-away on right). I think this photo shows that the difference between proper and improper ear carriage can be subtle, so requires some attention to make sure they're being held correctly.