Beagle Ears and Grooming: The Weekly Ear Check, the Coat, Nails and Teeth

Beagles are sold as low-maintenance, and the coat mostly is. The ears are not. A Beagle owner's grooming routine is five minutes a week on the body and a lifelong habit of lifting an ear and looking down it. Get the ear habit right and you will avoid most of the vet visits Beagle owners make.

The ears: why they go wrong

Long, heavy, hanging ears seal off the canal, keep it warm and damp, and the breed's canal is fairly narrow. Add a swim, a bath, a spring of wet grass or an allergy, and you have an ideal home for yeast and bacteria. Otitis externa is the single most common reason a Beagle sees a vet.

The weekly ear check

1. Lift the ear and look at the inside of the flap and as far down the canal as you can see. Healthy is pale pink, clean and dry.
2. Sniff. Healthy smells of nothing. A yeasty, sweet or sour smell is trouble.
3. Watch the dog for a few days: head shaking, scratching, rubbing the ear on the carpet, a head tilt, flinching when the ear is touched.

Redness, smell, dark brown or yellow discharge, pain or head shaking means a vet visit, not a home remedy. Drops from the pet shop into an ear with a ruptured eardrum can cause deafness, and a vet needs to look at the drum first. Two or more infections in a year mean something underneath, usually an allergy or an underactive thyroid, and it needs finding rather than treating the ear again and again.

Cleaning safely

Clean only when there is visible wax, not on a schedule; over-cleaning irritates the canal. Use a vet-approved ear cleaner: fill the canal, massage the base of the ear for twenty seconds until it squelches, stand back and let the dog shake, then wipe what you can see on the flap with cotton wool. Never a cotton bud, which pushes wax down and can damage the drum. Dry the ears after swimming and baths, and pay the dog with a treat every time, so the ear check is something they lean into.

The coat

Short, dense and weather-proof, and it sheds all year with a heavy moult in spring that surprises every new owner. A rubber curry brush or a grooming mitt once or twice a week lifts the dead hair and spreads the oils; daily during the moult, outdoors. No clipping, ever; the coat is meant to be short. Bath every six to eight weeks or when they have rolled in something, which is often, with a gentle dog shampoo, rinsed until the water runs clear, and the ears dried afterwards. Beagles have a mild hound smell; a strong smell is nearly always the ears, the teeth or the skin, not the coat.

Skin and allergies

Itchy paws, belly and armpits, recurrent ear trouble, hot spots in summer: allergy, common in the breed. Environmental allergies are more common than food, and the elimination diet, eight weeks on a single novel protein with nothing else, is the only real food test. Flea prevention monthly, bedding washed hot weekly, fish oil daily, and a vet plan if the itching lasts more than a few weeks. Hair thinning along the flanks and tail together with weight gain and lethargy points at the thyroid, and a blood test finds it.

Nails

Every three to four weeks. If they click on the floor they are too long, and long nails change how a dog stands and load the back, which matters in a breed prone to disc disease. Reward every nail; a Beagle will work for it. Grinders are gentler than clippers for a dog who hates it.

Teeth

Brush most days from puppyhood with a dog toothpaste; Beagles get tartar and gum disease early. Safe chews help. No cooked bones, and no antlers or nylon bones hard enough to crack a tooth. Ask the vet to look at every visit; a dental clean under anaesthetic by middle age is normal and far safer than leaving infected gums.

The monthly lump check

From about five, run your hands over the whole dog once a month: under the jaw, armpits, groin, along the flanks. Beagles get lumps, most harmless, some not. Measure, date, and ask the vet about anything new, growing or changing. The health problems guide covers what the vet may be looking for.