What do those tear streaks around my dog's eyes mean?

Question

Joshua Broadwater · Answer

What do those tear streaks around my dog's eyes mean? We see this a lot with a lot of dogs, especially lighter colored or white colored dogs because it's much more prominent when they have the brown or red streaks around their eyes. And so usually what that is is tearing or excessive tearing that has occurred either because it's not drained correctly down the tear duct. And sometimes that can be a medical issue. Sometimes it can be just a confirmation of how their faces is formed and how their eye and eyelids are formed that the tears drain onto the face. But there can be other issues that can cause this as well. Certain medical conditions that may need to be treated if we do find those. So some of those things that we could see an irritation to the eye with something like allergies or an infection can cause excessive tearing. If there's abnormal eyelashes rubbing on the eye, so a condition called dysthylchia or ectopic cilia where they have abnormal hairs rubbing on the eye, that can also cause an irritation to the eye. So there are some medical conditions that ideally an exam either by your veterinarian or a veterinary ophthalmologist like myself would help to find those issues and see if there's something that needs to be treated. Otherwise, if we find that it's just more of a conformational thing that it's related to essentially the way the eye developed and the tears are spilling over the eye onto the face, then sometimes that's more of just a cosmetic issue which there are treatments that can be done to help that, but many times it's not causing any pain or irritation or threatening to their eye health or their vision. So probably good to see a veterinarian to rule some of those diseases out to see if those need to be treated.

Christine Wickenheiser · Answer

What do the tear-streaked surround? My dog's eyes mean. So, keep it forever, or tearing or excess tearing for dogs. It's something that almost all dogs have. It's just really noticeable in white dogs. Some dogs just have excess of peripheral like your multis, your Shih, Tzu's pugs, Sometimes if they've never had a paper on, suddenly they do, suddenly they have tearing or it's just in one eye, that could be from conjunctivitis or irritation or a problem with that. I so that should be evaluated. But for like your poodle, that has just the kind of brown tears and staining, it's staining because of the pH of the tears, which you can alter the pH of the Tears by using things like Omega fatty acids and probiotics.

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"What do those tear streaks around my dog's eyes mean?"