Ear infections are common in dogs and cats. Young animals can have ear mites and without a microscope, the infection can look very much like a yeast infection--a dark or black waxy discharge. Your veterinarian should be initially consulted for treatment. This podcast is focusing on recurring ear infections that are either yeast or bacteria in origin, resulting from a biome or microflora imbalance. This imbalance can be caused by food allergies (commonly grains, other carbohydrates, dairy, chicken, beef, fish or fish oil), occasionally by environmental allergies, getting water in the ear or eating carbohydrates irrespective of food allergies. It is critical that you pay attention to what you feed your dog or cat in the hours or day prior to the onset of the infection. It's important to rotate the protein once a month to prevent hypersensitivities. Dogs and cats should not need regular ear cleaning if their immune system and microflora are balanced. At the end of the podcast, I give the listener a natural cure for aural hematomas, an viable option to surgery, which is to rub food-grade castor oil into the inner ear flap once a day for five days, massaging the oil into the hematoma. It can take up to 14 days for it the ear hematoma to subside completely and it's important to treat the underlying infection but it's an excellent option to surgery because there is no scar tissue, otherwise known as cauliflower ear, that occurs once the hematoma subsides.