Be careful with any dog eye issues

Just like all of my other posts, this one is brought to you from experience.  It involves dog eyes.  Though I always try to treat my dogs at home and as naturally as possible, injuries or issues with their eyes are one thing I don’t mess around with.  Once again, it took a bad experience for me to learn that lesson.

My first experience with eye issues

Many years and rescues ago I took in some young dogs that appeared to be blue heeler mix.  They had come to me after my sister had found them as puppies and gave them to my parents.  That arrangement had worked out fine until the puppies grew up and apparently started chasing my Dad’s chickens.  Dad was ready to do something drastic, so I took them in.

One day I noticed that Tex, one of those little dogs I’d taken in, had quite a bit of black gooey discharge coming from one of his eyes.  I looked closely at his eye, but didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, so I cleaned it up and let it be.  I figured it must have just been an instance of dust or something irritating it.  Each day when I got home from work I would notice that the eye continued to have discharge.  Not seeing anything, I was baffled, but not overly concerned.

One day when I checked on Tex’s eye, I found that the original black goo had changed to a green color, which I knew signaled infection.  I also noticed a haze was starting to form on Tex’s eye.  Still not seeing anything that could be causing the issue, but now worried, I immediately made an appointment with the vet.

Learning about the third eyelid

Even though I had pulled Tex’s bottom eyelid out to see if there was something in his eye more than once, I didn’t know dogs had third eyelids.  That was the first place the vet looked.  There, hidden deep in that third eyelid crevice was a gooey seed head that had been in Tex’s eye for at least a week, wreaking havoc.

Of course I felt awful that poor Tex had endured what I’m sure was a very painful experience for so long.  He was the first dog I’d ever had to have any sort of an eye issue at all, so I was completely inexperienced with them.  Luckily, Tex recovered with the help of some eye ointment and I learned a valuable lesson.  It would come in handy for the next time, several years later, when I found myself with another dog with an eye issue that didn’t appear to have a visible cause.

Another unexplainable eye issue

A few months ago, my Jack Russell Terrier, Ruby, went out on one of her spirited runs and came back squinting a little bit in one eye.  Not knowing if she’d just poked or scratched it or if it was something more serious, I immediately began treating her eye with colloidal silver.  I’d place a drop or two in her eye, depending how accurate my aim was, 2-3x a day.  Despite me diligently putting the drops in, Ruby’s eye continued to be wet looking at times and she continued to occasionally paw at it.  After a few days of no improvement, I suspected debris behind her third eyelid and made an appointment with the vet.

dog eye issues
Ruby with the hair missing around her eye where she’d rubbed her paw against it

After examining her eye and then numbing it, the vet swabbed out a small black piece of leaf or something that had gotten down behind Ruby’s third eyelid.  She credited Ruby’s eye looking so well, despite the foreign body, to my application of the colloidal silver and recommended I continue to use it for a bit longer.  Once the debris was removed, Ruby’s eye area stopped being wet and the pawing at her eye also stopped, allowing the hair she’d rubbed off around her eye to grow back.

I don’t know if it’s just coincidence or what, but both times I’ve had dogs get debris in their eye, they both have been smaller dogs.  None of my larger dogs, which is usually what I take in, have ever had an issue with their eyes (knock on wood).  I do know that it happens to larger dogs, it’s just been my personal experience to happen with the only smaller dogs I’ve ever had, for whatever reason.

Colloidal silver

I will be writing a post in the near future about colloidal silver and the many uses for it, including my own experience with it in treating my animals.  Like apple cider vinegar, I feel like if you have multiple animals, it’s a great item to keep in your arsenal for treating them.  It’s easy to administer, doesn’t hurt the animal when applied, works on so many things, and most importantly, it works very well.  You can also use it on yourself for a variety of things.  After having tried other brands, this is the brand that I prefer and use: http://amzn.to/2vBMw1j.

While a bit pricey, colloidal silver is still cheaper than a trip to the vet.  Of course that’s unless the issue at hand is an eye issue that doesn’t resolve quickly or gets worse while using colloidal silver.  Then it’s a useful tool in treatment, but it won’t cure an eye that has debris lodged somewhere in it.  If you find yourself in that situation, please err on the side of caution and get your dog, or cat if the case may be, to your vet for a thorough eye examination.

Please feel free to leave a comment with your own pet eye injury and/or treatment stories below.


To see more pictures of Ruby and the rest of the crew and their antics, be sure to check out my Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/savingscatsanddogswhilesavingcash/

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7 thoughts on “Be careful with any dog eye issues

  1. Thank you so much for this invaluable piece of advice. I have two (larger) dogs and up to now I haven’t had any issues with their eyes, but you never know….. The male has had a very stubborn dermatitis for more that two years, caused by over-vacccination (I think in retrospect) that the vet just couldn’t clear up. Only the antibiotics worked but I wasn’t in favour of that. He even had a vaccine done from his blood serum, but it wasn’t satisfactory either. I started using pure neem oil and cleared up the dermatitis completely…..and I also changed the vet. I have found a holistic vet who does titres instead of blind vaccinations.

    1. Angela,

      You are welcome and I’m glad you found this post helpful. My eye incidents were around ten years apart, but I definitely remembered how that first one went, so when the second one happened, I was definitely better educated and more prepared. You sound like an excellent Mom to your dogs for not giving up on the dermatitis issue and changing vets. 🙂

    2. Hello! I have Christopher’s Bilberry Eye supplement and want to try giving it to my 55 lb husky. How many capsules did you give to your labrador and how often? Thank you!

      1. Hi Ann,

        I gave Abby, my Labrador, the human dosage to start because she’s 90 lbs. For a 55 lb. dog, I’d give one pill twice a day and once she’s been on it for a while (a month) and has it in her system, you can probably scale back to only giving it once a day. Depending on what you are treating, I will say that I recently switched Abby over to a healing diet that has done wonders for her. Her hearing has improved, her eyes are clear, she has more energy, and she’s getting around better. Part of the protocol of the diet is eliminating supplements, which was hard for me to do, but she’s doing great without them. Here’s the link to the post that I just wrote, http://savingcatsdogsandcash.com/the-healing-diet-i-highly-recommend/.

        And don’t worry, if you bought those supplements for your dog, but want to try this diet for your dog, you can take the pills yourself. 🙂 I take them to help my vision and have been happy with the results.

  2. This may be a long shot, but what are your thoughts on colloidal silver for a 15 year old Min Pin with ‘pre’ cataracts?

    1. Stacey,

      I’ve never heard of colloidal silver helping cataracts, but I have heard of people using hexane-free castor oil for them. Having no personal experience with cataracts, I decided to pull out my top two books I use as my go-to resources to see if I could find something helpful for you.

      In Dr. Martin Goldstein’s book, ‘The Nature of Animal Healing’, which I recommend every pet owner get a copy of, on Pg. 207 he says cataracts are partly a result of environmental pollutants and ingested toxins since cataracts are nothing more than the accumulation of toxins in the lens of the eye. Age also obviously plays a factor as well.

      Dr. Goldstein discussed diabetes being a culprit, since cataracts are a side effect of the disease. Those types of cataracts tend to come on more quickly, Dr. Goldstein says and are really only treated by surgery. If that doesn’t sound like your situation, then Dr. Goldstein recommends for the more typical cataract that progresses slowly, “a regimen of homeopathic and herbal remedies, along with overall health improvement and metabolic balancing, can usually keep it from getting much worse–thus saving an animal’s vision–or even reverses the disease.” He says that eyebright and bilberry are the two herbs integral to holistic cataract treatment.

      There is more information regarding brands he recommends, or did back at the time of the publishing of this book, and information about with a healthy body cataracts will improve, but it’s too much to put here. I will say that given what he says about bilberry, and my own personal experience using it on my 12 year old Labrador’s graying eyes and my own vision improvement using Dr. Christopher’s Bilberry, I think bilberry might be a good place to start. Those supplements and Dr. Goldstein’s book are both listed on my Amazon shop page to make them easier for you to find locally or order from Amazon.

      Dr. Goldstein does also mention a particular diet he recommends in his book. You might also look into detoxing if you don’t do it on a regular basis, since 15 years is a long time to be exposed to toxins in food, water and the environment without any detox.

      I have always seen people talk about cataracts and how to help their pets with them, but I’ve never had a pet with them, so other than reading recommendations of using castor oil, I was happy to learn what causes them and how best to stop them from progressing as well as treat them from a renowned holistic vet. Maybe this information will help anyone else out there as well who is dealing with the same or a similar issue.

      Hopefully you find this information helpful and are able to get a copy of the book or borrow one from your local library if you need more information. Watching our pets get old and start detoriarting before our eyes is heartbreaking, but hopefully some minor tweaking and a good supplement will help make your seniors’ final years a bit easier. Good luck and let me know if I can be of any more help.

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