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.

Cataracts can be relatively easy to see on most dogs. You can get a light and a certain amount of magnification and peer into the pupil area. People will sometimes see corneas glazed over the outside of the eyeball and say, "Oh, my dog has a cataract", when cataracts are really inside the eyeball. They're in the lens, behind the colored part. So we can peek in there and see if we can get the light all the way through, and you can usually see a cataract on there. Dogs can't tell you, "I saw double or triple of everything," so you've got to look for them.

There is cataract surgery for dogs. We don't do it here, but some specialists do that. That is an option, but the difference in people is that they do cataract surgery way sooner than they typically would in dogs. We can see dogs with small cataracts that aren't a big deal and never give any issues, and then you've got cataracts that are legitimately affecting their vision and their quality of life. Those are the ones that you'll get surgery for.

Yes, absolutely. We love them all, but the smashed face, buggy eye dogs are your classics. Unfortunately, they have big wide eyes and they're eyelids can't even close completely over the eyes. Those eyes are out there and exposed to injury, being poked and even getting dried out.

Those dogs are anatomically more prone to eye issues. A good number of dog breeds have genetic predispositions for eye issues, not to mention other diseases that can affect the eyes. They say the eyes are like a window into the body and the health of the body. So many dogs can have issues with their eyes.

There're a lot of things you can look for. Eye injuries can be very painful. We both had them, we've known people who've had them. So you can look for signs of pain like holding the eyes shut, squinting hard, shying away if you go to pet or touch them or touch the eye, pawing at the face, redness, and swelling are all symptoms of an injury. If a dog has something in its eye, it's going to be painful.