The many ears of Lexi

When we first got Lexi, her ears were perfect. "Floppy," I called them. They were like little triangles hanging down from her head. This is a picture of Lexi and her sister (we chose between those two).

A couple days later, I noticed that one of the was doing something weird. It was back further from her head and didn't "perk" like the other one. I pointed this out to Jordan, calling them the "good" ear, and the "bad" ear. When this didn't go away, I looked up information on Australian Shepherd ears and found that there are many different types of Australian ears, even though one type is preferred over the others--the button ear, what I call the "floppy" ear. (This picture is a more recent example: Lexi's left ear is button, the right is rosed)

Lexi's other ear was "rosing," apparently. Rose ears are an "acceptable" ear set--but in my opinion it was kind of weird looking. I was really upset when her other ear started to rose about a week after the first one went. I wanted floppy ears! But that's how they've been ever since.

And when they were rosed, she would put them way back on walks and her ears would do this:

I did more research and I found out online that if you really, really wanted your Aussie to have button ears, you have the option of gluing them from 3 months to 6 months. I guess when puppies are teething, their ears are pliable. I ordered the glue, and the day before it arrived, both of Lexi's ears were going button. But Jordan and I are extremely shallow, and we weren't going to take any chances.

So now Lexi's ears are glued to her head. She scratched at them for a little while but it is super de duper glue and now she doesn't really seem to mind. Anyway, I just wanted to explain why her ears will look funny in pictures for the next few months. She looks so sad because the glue presses her "eyebrows" into a funny shape. She's not actually sad!

In three months, she'll be good to go. And then her ears can do more crazy stuff like this.