For years I read online about “The Purple Stuff” for treating dogs ears. It is a mixture of Borax, Alcohol and Gentian Violet. The latter is used for breast feeding and cleansing stuff and in its unmixed form will stain everything and anything it touches!!! The same as mercurochrome when your mom used to put that on your cuts and you knew were it went because everything was red.

Professional trainers swear by this and treat the dogs after every retrieving run where they are in water. I had thought of using it with my Labrador before, but never did. He had big heavy ears and was infection prone. After he was gone and we got our current dog, Kako, I did not have the problem with her at all. Her ears are smaller and she hardly ever got dirty ears and if she did Optic solution cleaned it up.

Then my daughter bought a yellow male Labrador and before he was a year, the Q-Tips made it look like he was hiding chocolate in this ears. Regular ear cleaning did not help and it was time to get serious and get the supplies to try the purple stuff.

The Recipe

So the recipe above is how much you need to fit into the 4 oz bottles I have listed below.

  • 1 Bottle – Gentian Violet
  • 2 4 oz Bottles with droppers. You can buy one bottle but I switch to a new clean bottle as they need cleaning between fill ups.
  • Boric acid
  • Isopropyl alcohol, get the stronger stuff. Get 70 – 90% and its cheaper at Walmart
  • Mix all ingredients in the alcohol bottle & shake. (make sure you shake before every application).
4 oz bottles

One of the above 4 ounce bottles treated two dogs twice a day for two weeks and once a day for two weeks. This was the initial clean the ears up treatment.

Treatment amount I use for each ear.

So my daughters dog was infected, or close and needed heavy treatment, so I had to go heavy and I did it for both dogs. He was starting to scratch at his ears and this knocked it down quickly and he will still scratch sometimes, but not much. When I clean his ears I hardly see much to complain about now.

Treatment: Fill ear with solution & massage gently for 30 seconds and wipe with a tissue. They recommend to fill a second time and just wipe without massaging. I only did it this way once. The dog will shake the excess out. Be careful, the Gentian Violet could stain, but I did not have that issue diluted like this. I use an eye dropper to fill the ear.

Treatment to start:
2 times per day for the first 2 weeks
1 time per day for the next 2 weeks
1 time per month thereafter, I do it every Sunday night and have an outlook reminder for it.

I also use it when bringing them back home after swimming somewhere. I think river/pond water and all the organism’s in them plays a major factor in dog ear infections. It also does not stain when thinned out in this dosage, that I have seen yet. I do it in the kitchen now as I noticed it did not stain the bricks outside.

Enjoy!