How do I clean my dogs eyes?

Question

Joshua Broadwater · Answer

How do I clean my dog's eyes? So yeah, this is a common question as an ophthalmologist that I get all the time because a lot of dogs get a lot of gunk and discharge in their eyes and sometimes it's for a medical reason and other times it's just unsightly and it's the fluffy little white poodle or bichon that is cute as all get out but they got all this brown discharge around their eyes. So my job when these dogs come in to see me is to look for any medical reason that they could be having the discharge. So things like dry eye can cause a lot of gunk to accumulate around the eyes, abnormal hairs that rub on the eyes can cause this, inflammatory issues like allergies can absolutely do this, blocked tear ducts can cause the tears not to flow the way they're supposed to from the eye and spill out over the eyelid surface and onto the face. So that can also contribute. So my first job is to roll those things out and treat those if we have to. If we've rolled out all of those things, then there's a couple other things you can look to do. Sometimes keeping the hair around the eyes really short can minimize where a lot of that discharge can accumulate. So frequent grooming, keeping that hair short. There are some over the counter products. One of them is called Optics Care or there's different various types of wipes. That's just one of the brands that is over the counter that can be used to clean around the eyes. There are some stronger products that can be used as well. One of them is an antibiotic that is meant to help and remove a lot of the tear staining as well. But it's tricky because dogs are then going on an antibiotic they don't need to go on. So sometimes it's not always recommended if the staining is not causing a true medical issue with the eyes. So those are a couple options.

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"How do I clean my dogs eyes?"