How to: administering ear medicine to your dog

When we first tried cleaning and administering ear medicine to Mochi, he resisted surprisingly strongly for an 11 lb guy. Tracy then remembered the trick the vet used, and which we have now used successfully. This is somewhat specific to smaller dogs, but probably can be adapted to larger ones. It also requires two people, but I suppose if you're really coordinated, you can try it by yourself.

1. Get a large biscuit/treat. The ones we used are more than twice the size of his normal treats.
2. Break the treat in half.
3. Have your helper hold the treat in one hand, but cover most of it. You don't want the dog to snarf it up too quickly.
   
4. Put the dog in the helper's lap where she can hold the dog with her free hand. Only the dog's side should be facing you, not his face. That way, you have direct access to one of his ears.
   
5. Have the helper give the treat to the dog, keeping the treat mostly covered, so the dog has to take multiple bites to finish it. As the dog eats the treat, the helper should expose more of the treat from her hand; otherwise, the dog might accidentally bite her when trying to get to the remainder.
   
6. Finally, your turn. While the dog is eating, hold the dog's ear and calmly and quickly administer the medicine.
7. When you're done with one ear, turn the dog around, get the other treat half, and repeat steps 5 & 6.
   

We've been doing this on the couch, which probably wasn't a good idea since it now has a lot of treat crumbs in the cracks. But at least he hasn't been fighting like mad when it's medicine/cleaning time.