I didn't like that idea, nor did I have the money to pay for more drugs and checkups. When the antibiotic drops failed to work, I started looking for other options. First, I begged my favorite holistic practitioner to treat Luke. She agreed to come to my car outside her office to work on Luke. Muscle-testing me while I had my hand on the dog, the practitioner revealed some interesting findings.

First, Luke was very allergic to his dog food. (Subsequent testing showed him allergic to most dog foods.) As his allergy was weakening his immune system, we put him on a diet of ground beef and rice with lightly cooked vegetables. He loved his new food.

Secondly, testing revealed Luke had a yeast infection in his digestive tract. We then tested a yeast remedy used to treat yeast infections in humans and found it was a good match. Through subsequent visits, it became apparent his neck was out of alignment. When we found someone trained to use animal chiropractic, Luke improved. Although he no longer scratched his ears by running them along the carpet and had stopped shaking his head all the time, the infection still wasn't entirely gone and would flare up occasionally.

We discovered that dogs can be cleared for allergies, if you can find someone who does that kind of advanced work on animals. Being on a limited budget, however, we decided not to pursue it. Luke's ears still had an odor at times and lots of ear wax. To me, this signaled a reoccurrence of the yeast problem.

When someone shared a home remedy of vinegar to dissolve ear wax, my daughter got out the organic apple cider vinegar. Soaking a cotton ball in the cider, she swabbed out Luke’s ears. Luke hated the smell. We discovered, however, that if she did it once a day, Luke’s ears smelled good again. And so, she kept up this daily routine.

Weeks later, I realized that my daughter had stopped the routine. Because Luke’s ears didn’t smell any more, she forgot to do the swabbing. I checked his ears and discovered they were perfectly normal.

Now, a year later, Luke has never had another occurrence of the problem. We decided the vinegar must have finally cleared it permanently. Thank God for good, old-fashioned folk remedies!