We love the neighbor's dog, but...

I don't visit this forum because we don't have pets. We love the neighbor's dog though. He comes to visit us at least twice a day when his owners don't have him all chained up, and we give him lots of affection and doggie treats. Chewy has a house with lots of straw bedding, but we worry about him, as he shows signs of mistreatment.

Chewy bounds over to our house when he recognizes our vehicles coming down the street. He's a lab/retriever cross and bounds everywhere he goes. Funny dog. :-) We just love him.

Here is the issue. Chewy obviously has a problem with his ears, one worse than the other. When my husband scratched him behind the ears a couple of weeks ago, Chewy yelped when Handsome Man scratched behind his right ear, but he seemed to enjoy the scratching behind the left. Now he can't stand either. Both ears are red as a cherry when we look in them.

When Handsome Man mentioned this to the neighbor, the guy just chuckled and said Chewy was a tough dog and "probably got into something he shouldn't have." We would like to treat Chewy, but don't know what his trouble is or what to use on it.

Could it be mites from the straw? Infection? Something else? What do we look for to figure it out? What would we use on any of those? We don't know much about dogs, just that we love Chewy. I'll see if I can get a picture later.

Also if someone has a better idea of how to handle the situation rather than us treating him without the neighbor's knowledge, we're all ears. It's a small town with no vet or law enforcement or anything like that.