Your dog busted a blood vessel in the “flippyflap” part of the left ear.
There are a LOT of ways to deal with this, from “doing nothing” to doing stem-to-stern surgery with bloodwork, urinalysis, neurology consult (because those guys are expensive and do nothing really.) – — or just tape it up and drain it. If you put kenalog in the ear void, it helps it simmer down faster.
We can “leave it alone’ and it’ll bust open all the way, or, resorb and crinkle like “a pringle and a ruffle” had a baby.
Some people (farmers) used to just pop the thing with a jackknife and send em out into the yard to clot, and that works, too. Gotta keep ’em from shaking their heads so they don’t bleed again / more. But they can’t really bleed to death, so it was a pragmatic, 1940’s and messy way to fix this. We can tape the ear, overhead, and drain it with a Kenalog infusion and that’s a great way to do it with less mess, less pain and better (much less] crinkling.
We should check, to make sure. In this case, the ear isn’t infected at the moment.
The ear can be incised with a long, linear incision and then the flippyflap embroidered / quilted together with multiple little sutures. This is very profitable. It is arguably overkill.
I think if it was a show dog, and you wanted the best chances of “healing without a trace” the surgery is the best option. Honestly, show dog people don’t generally allow their dog to have an ear infection long enough to have a hematoma. This is the kind of thing that sneaks up on regular white people in middle class America.
So while surgery is certainly possible, my favorite is “tape and drain”.
DocJohnson
