When ear infections return each summer, three forces meet in the same canal: water left behind by swimming and baths, warm humid air that helps yeast and bacteria multiply, and seasonal allergies acting underneath. An infected ear is typically red, smelly (yeasty or foul), waxy or dischargy, and the dog shakes their head, scratches, tilts, or resents the ear being touched. Recurrence means something underneath is not being addressed, not that you keep failing at drops.
Breaking the Recurrence Cycle
After swimming or baths, dry the outer ear gently, and use a vet-recommended drying/ cleaning solution if your vet has advised one for your dog — never put anything deep into a sore ear, and never use leftover drops from a previous episode without a vet checking the eardrum first, because some medications damage ears if the drum is ruptured. Recurrent cases deserve a proper work-up: your vet may look for ear mites, a foreign body like a grass seed (a classic summer cause — sudden violent head-shaking after a walk in long grass is a grass-seed picture until proven otherwise), polyps, or an allergy plan. Grass seeds are the time-critical one: they migrate inward and should be removed promptly, so same-day is the right speed for a dog who comes home from a field shaking one ear violently.
Working With Your Vet
For a dog whose ears flare every summer, the vet visit works well as an investigation rather than a repeat prescription. Expect the vet to look down the canal, check whether the eardrum is intact, and consider a sample from the ear so yeast, bacteria or mites can be identified rather than guessed at. Your part of that picture is timing: which weeks flare, whether swims or baths came first, which ear is worse, and what discharge or smell you noticed. Where episodes keep returning, ask whether an allergy plan belongs alongside the ear treatment, since treating the canal alone leaves the driver untouched.
Sudden violent head-shaking after grassland walks, a head tilt, loss of balance, or an ear too painful to touch needs a vet the same day.
Between appointments, keep an ear diary for this dog rather than a general health log: the date each episode started, which ear was affected, recent swims or baths, any new foods or pollen-heavy walks, and when drops were given and finished. A season of those entries shows whether flares follow water, high-pollen weeks or nothing obvious at all, and it gives the vet a timeline to work from instead of a summary from memory.
At the next appointment, open the Pet Passport inside KinsLe and walk through the summer's episode dates and findings in the order they happened.