Love the ferret ball pics!    Maxi is a handsome young man!!     
  
Have you tried shaving the hair on the upper 1/3 of the ears?    When we got Toto at 16 weeks, her little ears had just "popped" up and Ava told us to keep the upper 1/3 cut or the hair would pull them back down.    You just trim it to the edge around the top of the ear and cut it on the front & back to about 1/8 of an inch on the upper 1/3 of the ear!   We keep Toto's like that and her pointy little ears never miss a whisper ... she has the most amazing hearing I have ever seen!!