The answer's typically going to be no. The word infection might be a bit tricky because we're not necessarily seeing a lot of infections. It may just be an inflammation situation or maybe a certain disease. But often when eye things come up, unless it was something in the eye and they were tearing a little bit and 10 minutes later it was fine, treatment of some form is needed to fix it. If you don't address it, more chronic things start to happen. I would stay on the side of caution and not assume it's not going to go away on its own.

If you suspect an eye issue, have it looked at. There are plenty of times where it's not a big deal and has a simple treatment, it could be nothing. But there are plenty of times where if you blow it off, it turns into something worse or a situation we don't want it to be. A more expensive situation than the original problem would have been.

There's a difference between pink eye and cherry eye. There's also a difference between dogs and people because to get a cherry eye, you've got to have that third eyelid where you've got that gland that pops up and out. It's down in that middle portion and it bulges out. If your dog has a cherry eye, surgery is typically recommended. It used to be that you'd go in and they cut it out. If it's not there, the problem is solved. But that created all kinds of new problems because there's a gland there that's important with tearing. So typically, it's tucked and secured back in. If the cherry eye is out for a long time, surgery becomes less effective down the road. In some cases, we have to send you to a specialist and have them take care of it.

We get that question a lot. It depends on what you call pink eye. Before these questions, I Googled what most people would be looking for with pink eye, because the majority of people are thinking of a specific contagious type of pink eye that you see in humans. But their definition of pinkeye is just a red inflamed eye, so it's conjunctivitis. We can all get conjunctivitis; dogs, cats, anything that has an eye can get it. There are infectious as well as non-infectious conjunctivitis. The majority of the ones we see in dogs and cats are not contagious. There're very few, I won't say none, but few situations where we are sharing eye diseases with our dogs. It is always a good idea to wash your hands anytime you do a treatment or play with your dog. That would prevent any possible contagion.

With eye medication, having a friend is helpful. Doing it alone can be challenging, but if you are by yourself and if your dog's good, have it sit in your lap or in a corner where they can't back away from you. You're going to want to use gravity as your friend. You want to lift their head and have their eye facing upwards so you can have the drop dropping down. You can pull an eyelid down or pull it up to aim for it. I always tell people one to two drops in the eye is enough even if it means it took 10 drops to get it in there because you got one in the nose, one on the forehead, one on the face because they moved their head, or you're not sure if they blinked. It can sometimes be a process.