Ear Taping?

This is mostly just a curiosity.

Is it done in your breed? What is your opinion on it?

In shelties it's done all the time and it never really bugged me but I just found a papillon breeder that routinely tapes all their pups' ears from the time they are very young (like 6 weeks), which struck me as really odd. I've never known anyone personally to tape ears in the breed (especially not every single puppy). I don't know why but it bugs me a LOT more in papillons than shelties. Paps are supposed to have exceptionally thick ear leather to begin with so it just seems like ear taping would cause more problems than anything. If you tape all the ears, isn't there a chance that you could begin to start getting dogs with weak leather to begin with? I've been around a LOT of papillons and I have only known a few that have had ears that weren't correct (ie: not full drop or fully erect). So... it seems pointless?

Someone even mentioned they knew a breeder that tried to tape a phalene's ears up and I just want to know WHYYY? And the end result was a ruined ear set anyways that broke halfway like sheltie ears.

People tape pug ears because Button ears are more desirable in the ring even though both are accepted.



ETA: Here's Button ears, Izzie's goes back and forth between rose and button and i can flip them to button (and they'll go however they want after)... Her ears are way big for her, so they look weird when put in button mode, Pug ears should be petite and in button mode make the head look neater and rounder.

It is done in collies. I'd rather not do it, but since Logan still needs to be shown in conformation, I have to do it (breeder contract). It's not the taping/gluing I dislike that much, it's the removing of the glue >.< I've tried tape but I can't get it to work. I will try again before I glue Logan's ears tomorrow (I took them out for the ATTS test and birthday pictures ).

I like the tipped ears best, but I don't necessarily dislike prick ears. I don't care for drop ears on a collie, though. The bottom line is that ear set doesn't really interfere with working ability, which is my primary focus.


Apparently boxer ears are taped too if they're not cropped? Not sure how, but I remember reading about it once.

Yep, collie ears are taped just like shelties'. It bugs me because a lot of people think I'm being cruel or something, even though it clearly doesn't bother Keegan at all to have them taped down. Even one of my coworkers who's definately a "dog person" truely felt sorry for Keegan.

Anyway, I get what you're saying about paps gradually getting weaker ear leather. Personally I wish collie ears would flop like they're supposed to naturally. But then I think about all the other stuff that good breeders have to breed for, and I figure that if you can get the same results (i.e. the "correct" ear set) through artificial means (i.e. taping), I don't really have much of a problem with that.

ETA: sorry saeleofu, posted at the same time.

I did tape up one of Rain's ears. She was exceptionally large eared as a puppy and while one went up the other had a odd crimp at 16 weeks which made me a bit nervous since she did have a phalene in her near background. So I glued in a divot for 24 hrs and ta da... straight eared ever since.

It probably would've come up on it's own eventually. I wouldn't make a standard practice of it but as a minor helper I don't think it's a big deal.

pre glue


See the red supports?


48 hrs later.

Yup, people do it with Yorkie pups all the time. They have floppy ears as pups and the standard is of course to have erect ears... some breeders will only do it to pups who are having trouble with their ears standing. I wouldn't ever do it -- I know it's not the standard, but I like the floppy ears, too.

Here's a Biewer Yorkie with taped ears:

It's the same as Pugs. They tape for the Button ear because it's desirable over the rose ear.

Fortunately my family/coworkers understand that it's not anything that bothers the dog. But I get tired of people asking "What happened to his ears?!?!?!?!!11!?11??!11!!!!" out in public

In GSD's people usually don't tape ears. I would be very unlikely to purchase a shepherd from a breeder who taped all of their dogs' ears. I can see if a pup every so often needs it or it's done occasionally as a precaution but by default? Why?

I don't need cookie cutter dogs but prick ears are one of the most important physical attributes of the breed. Giving the ear cartilage "extra help" is just asking for a line that produces abnormally weak ear cartilage. I feel that since prick ears that stand on their own aren't rare or special, that breeders should be aiming to maintain a level of cartilage strength average for the breed (or better).

I mean no point taking a breed/type/line that is normally set to go right out of the womb, and then for no good reason letting cartilage integrity go so the breed/type/line requires doctoring and intervention to get it to look right...

It bothered me a lot as well. It makes me feel like she could be missing breeding stock that could have been weak eared to start with and may have ended up with an incorrect ear set but because of taping, ended up with erect ears and thus breedable and bred. Since it's a breed characteristic to have big, butterfly ears, it bothers me.

It doesn't bother me with breeds that have rose/floppy ears or tipped ears that need to be taped since I know very few dogs that have perfect tipped ears from birth.

That being said, when I get a BC, I will probably tape ears because I like erect eared BCs and it's not a breed standard for BCs to have erect or floppy ears so I will do it for my personal aesthetic preference.

I won't ever bother taping just because I've done it before and thought it was a pita.



That tape job looks totally different than these did! They did like the yorkie and put tape around them completely starting much much younger. Imo it's a bit different if the pup is older and needs a bit of help, but they do every pup at at least 6 weeks old. Bernard was about Rain's age when he was still doing the phalene thing on one ear.

To be honest though I'd be worried breeding a dog with weak ears in this breed. I'm even not sure that Nard's ears are strong enough. In shelties you almost have to tape ears so I would hate for paps to end up in a similar state where you nearly always need to help the ears along.

I agree.

IMO there are bigger worries in papillons than weak ear sets becoming more common. Health testing or the lack thereof imo is a bigger worry. The non selection for temperament is also a bit of a worry. Breeding of nervebag and sharp dogs is a big worry. Breeding dogs incapable of living as a normal housedog is also a big worry of mine.

I'd take a herd of weak eared/mismark dogs with health testing on the pedigree and living as pets over pedigree of champions living in rabbit hutches any day of the **** week.

Well yes, there are worse things but it still seems bizarre to routinely tape ears when ear set isn't even a problem generally in the breed.

I guess I don't really care about taping either way, but it probably would bother me if I thought breeders of my breed were creating a problem by using it to the point they didn't even know what their dogs were producing anymore.

Don't see a lot of ear-taping in FCRs though...lol. And that's my only purebred.

Kim's ears are naturally tipped but they wouldn't be considered correct for a collie or anything (the break is too low and the left ear is slightly rose instead of fully button), but as she isn't a collie they are perfect for her

It is odd but maybe she's had a promising dog go south on her that didn't need to happen. I know when I had a bite go crappy on me because my vet didn't listen to me about pulling puppy teeth I got a lot more direct about insisting when teeth needed to be pulled.

Ha, imagine what we dobe people go through!

YES, I tape ears. No, the dogs don't mind it. No, I don't mind it. But you can bet I get my fair share of nasty looks and mean comments.



No taping, and the ears don't stand.

I have never taped an ear. My mom's dog Dash had her ears glued as a puppy, just a little dab of tear mender on her fur to keep the tips down. I didn't see the point of it since she wasn't going to be shown, but my parents and the breeder preferred the tip-eared look so I followed up with it. She has adorable, perfect tipped ears.

For my own dog, I would never tape/glue border collie ears. If I had a cropped breed or a show dog, you bet I'd tape!

I think cropping is a bit different lol. There's no point in cropping if you don't tape it.

We tried taping Nikki's ears.... the end result was:

DSC_0247 by Summer_Papillon, on Flickr

This is why I'm scared to ever have a cropped dog. LOL. I couldn't even do sheltie ears properly.

Not really OT but I just wanted to say I really REALLY like Smooth Collies with completely prick ears, I just love that look so much better than them tipped.

When Traveler hit four months and his ears still weren't up I did start dabbling in some research on taping ears because I so did not want his dumbo ears dropped. Luckily it was just a lot of ear to go up and to be contrary he waited until he was teething for his ears to decide to stand completely

YES, I know! I think a lot of time people don't even notice, but it does bug me when they comment about it. The worst is the suggestion that I'm actually hurting my puppy by taping his ears down. Some people have very strong reactions.

I wonder if rough collies have the same problem? I see pictures of rough collie puppies and sometimes I can't even tell if they're taped, they're so fuzzy at that age the fur hides a lot.

And honestly, this is a big reason why I probably won't have a puppy with cropped ears. Puppy socialization is SO important to me, but I would have a hard time doing it knowing that I was going to get tons more nasty comments. If I got a cropped breed, I'd probably wait until he was older and the tape was removed.