Recently, I was providing drop ins for my senior shih tzu groom client and found that the owner had tied his ears up with an elastic band because "the hair was getting in his eyes." She was going to leave him like this all weekend.

A couple things: the dog never sees the vet and has untreated eye and heart disease. Despite being on trazodone during our grooms (he bites, HARD) he still manages to become so stressed during a brief bath that his tongue turns blue and he starts coughing. The heart ain't heartin'.

Normally, it's a bad idea to tie a dog's ears up for prolonged periods or tightly because it cuts off blood flow. Now imagine doing that to a dog whose heart is so weak that blood doesn't perfuse the extremities. Yeah... emergency.

I couldn't untie the ears by myself because he was in so much pain and distress that he would snap and thrash violently. Mind you, this was also a tight, thin hair elastic and couldn't be removed with hands alone. It was really cutting into the flesh.

I desperately texted my friends, who are also groomers, for help and they came by the house after they had finished work. It took the three of us, armed with cooked bacon (the shih tzu eats a lot of it) and bite gloves to remove the elastic. We also shaved the ears because we wanted to see how much bruising or swelling was present and to prevent the owner from tying them up again. One ear was hot and one ear was cold. Bad.

I let the owner know what happened and gently told her that tying the ears up could be dangerous. She genuinely didn't know. I also let her know I had to call in some friends for back up. She was uninterested.

Fast forward to today and I'm grooming him. 10 shave down, eyes crusted shut, the usual. I shave off the ears and... Oh my god?? They're moth eaten and parts of them clearly died off from the constriction.

I have always felt like I'm over the top and excessively careful when working with compromised dogs, but this was an extremely validating situation for me. If I had left him in that state and not called in my friends for reinforcement, he wouldn't have ears!

Happy Halloween, I guess.

Ears almost rotted off 🙃