Home Remedies for Conjunctivitis in Dogs
Home remedies can be used to help with discomfort and to keep the eye clean but will usually not treat the underlying medical issue. You can use sterile saline eye wash solutions gently once or twice daily to clean discharge from around your dog’s eye and to flush dust, pollens, and debris away from his eye.
Do not perform an eye flush at home without first consulting your veterinary team to ensure no further injury is made to the eye.
There are some holistic products that can be administered topically around the eye or orally to avoid tear duct blockage, which can cause conjunctivitis in some dogs. It’s important to discuss options with your veterinarian before starting any products for treating eye conditions in your dog.
What are the symptoms of conjunctivitis in dogs?
Conjunctivitis is an uncomfortable condition that may cause your dog to paw at their eye, blink or squint. You may also notice clear or green discharge from the eye or that the white of the eyes, eyelids or area surrounding your dogs eye are red and swollen.
Often conjunctivitis will start in one eye then quickly spread to the other through contamination, although in cases where allergies or or viral infection are the cause both eyes can be affected right from the start.
If your dog is showing signs of conjunctivitis, even if symptoms seem very mild, contact your vet as soon as possible. Left untreated conjunctivitis can lead to permanent eye damage.
Signs and symptoms of conjunctivitis in dogs
When it comes to conjunctivitis, one of the most common telltale signs is red or bloodshot eyes. Other symptoms vary depending on the severity of the inflammation, but may include the following:
At the first sign of any visible eye issue, call your veterinarian. If conjunctivitis becomes severe, it can cause permanent damage to the cornea. This is not a condition that will go away on its own, so medical treatment is necessary.
There are various possible causes for conjunctivitis, and the cause will dictate treatment.
Dogs can develop conjunctivitis in numerous ways, which makes it challenging to prevent. Allergens, bacteria, and viruses are all around, so it’s not an uncommon issue.
Conjunctivitis can be either infectious or non-infectious.
One of the first steps in diagnosing conjunctivitis is a physical examination. If the dog is blinking or squinting a lot as a result of the infection, an anesthetic eye drop may be administered to numb the eye and make the examination more tolerable. The veterinarian will check for any foreign objects, along with contributing factors like hair rubbing on the eye, poor eyelid conformation, and patterns or trends that might be contributing to chronic conjunctivitis.
Conjunctivitis can be a secondary condition to another type of illness, such as a respiratory tract infection. In cases like this, both conditions would be treated.
In some cases, conjunctivitis may be caused by a more severe problem like corneal ulcers. Making a definitive diagnosis requires spreading an orange dye called fluorescein on the eye’s surface to render scratches, ulcers, and foreign material visible under a blue light.
A full eye examination must be performed before treatment is prescribed, because different causes for conjunctivitis require different treatments.
An undiagnosed eye condition should never be treated without instructions from a veterinarian. Human eye drops and other medications should not be administered, because they can aggravate the condition or even cause permanent damage to your dog’s eye.
The specific course of treatment will be determined by the cause of your dog’s conjunctivitis. Common treatment recommendations include:
Allergy-Related Conjunctivitis
Viral Conjunctivitis
Bacterial Conjunctivitis
Injury
Regardless of the underlying cause, your veterinarian may recommend that your dog wear an Elizabethan collar until the conjunctivitis has resolved. Although it may seem like a nuisance, an E-collar will prevent your dog from making his eyes worse by rubbing or scratching.
A dog’s owner can apply prescribed eye drops at home. Here’s how:
Once eye drops are administered, your dog should feel some relief relatively soon. The healing process begins within a few days. Full recovery time varies but can take up to two or three weeks.
Dog Health Treatment & Advice : How to Treat Dog Conjunctivitis
Conjunctivitis, commonly known as “pink eye,” can be a real pain in the … eye. Just like people, dogs can get pink eye. How a dog’s eye or eyes become infected can be the result of a virus, bacteria, foreign body, parasite or allergies. With so many ways for your pup’s eyes to become infected, treatment varies.
Pink eye, in both humans and canines, is an irritation or inflammation of the white part of the eyeball called the conjunctiva.1 The most common symptom is redness, which is why conjunctivitis is called pink eye. A dog’s eye, however, is different from a human’s eye because the conjunctiva is usually less visible. The telltale sign of redness in the eye can be missed even if you spend hours lovingly staring into your dog’s eyes. But there are other symptoms of canine conjunctivitis that you can look out for.
If you notice your dog constantly pawing at his eyes, that probably warrants a trip to the vet to rule out pink eye or some other problem. If you suspect that your dog may have pink eye, it is important that a veterinarian conduct a complete eye exam to rule out other eye diseases as well as properly check for conjunctivitis.
The most obvious symptom, however, is any unusual behavior by your dog related to his eyes. We all know how our dogs behave “normally”, so don’t ignore strange behavior. Your dog is probably trying to tell you something.
A common question about canine pink eye is whether it is contagious and whether a human can contract pink eye from a dog and vice versa. After all, pink eye is famously known for being highly contagious. While there is some debate concerning these questions, like most diseases, “an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.”
In general, canine conjunctivitis can be either contagious or non-contagious. Contagious conjunctivitis is caused by bacteria, a virus, or sometimes a parasite while non-contagious conjunctivitis is caused by allergies or an eye injury. While contagious conjunctivitis is rarer for dogs, the disease is believed to be contagious. It can be spread through casual contact with the infected eye or infected discharge. Less clear is whether the disease is species specific.