How to Tell If Your Dog Has an Eye Infection

I was a vet tech before I was a groomer, so the first thing I do when a dog steps onto my table is look at its eyes. If you want to know how to tell if your dog has an eye infection, you can get most of the way there yourself in about a minute, using good light and nothing else.

Below is the check I run, in the order I run it, what the different signs usually mean, and where the line sits between something you can wipe away and something a vet needs to see. If you also want the medical side of it, we cover the difference between eye allergies and an infection in a separate post.

The 60-second eye check

Do this in daylight or under a bright lamp. Kneel beside your dog or sit it in front of you so you are at eye level, then work through the same steps in the same order every time. Doing it the same way is how you avoid skipping something.

1. Lift the hair above both eyes with your fingertips so you can see the whole eye, not just the middle of it.
2. Look at the white part. It should be white, not pink or red.
3. Look at the surface. It should be shiny and clear, a bit like wet glass.
4. Check the inner corners for discharge, and note the color.
5. Check that both pupils are the same size as each other.
6. Watch your dog blink a few times. Both lids should close all the way.
7. Look at the fur under each eye for wet patches or staining.

That is the whole check. On a dog with a long face coat you will have to hold the hair back with one hand to see anything at all, and that already tells you the hair is long enough to be resting on the eye.

Compare one eye against the other

This is the step most people skip, and it tells you more than any single sign does. Dogs are fairly symmetrical. When both eyes look the same, whatever is going on is usually affecting the whole dog, so think dust, wind, pollen or a smoky room. When one eye looks different from the other, something happened to that eye on its own.

So hold the two side by side in your head. Is one eye more closed than the other? Is one running while the other is dry? Is one white pink and the other white still white? A difference between the two eyes moves the whole thing up a level of urgency, because a scratch, a grass seed or an insect bite happens to one eye at a time.

What you see	What it usually means	What to do
Clear watery tears in both eyes	Dust, wind, pollen or hair in the eyes	Wipe it and watch it for a day or two
Yellow or green discharge	Infection, sometimes on top of another problem	Call your vet
Red lining inside the lid	Irritation, allergies or infection	Call your vet
Squinting, or one eye held shut	Pain, often a scratch on the surface	Vet the same day
Swollen lid or swelling around the eye	Infection, a bite, or a blocked gland	Vet the same day
Cloudy or blue-grey surface	A problem with the cornea, or pressure in the eye	Vet the same day
Rust colored staining, no redness	Tears overflowing, often from a blocked duct	Mention it at the next groom or vet visit
Pawing at the face, rubbing on furniture	Itch or pain, and the rubbing makes it worse	Stop the rubbing and call your vet

Breeds where I look more often

Some dogs need this check weekly rather than monthly. Flat-faced breeds like French bulldogs, pugs and shih tzus have shallow eye sockets, so more of the eye sits out in the open where dust, hair and sand can reach it. They also tend not to blink all the way closed, which leaves the surface drier than it should be.

Long face coats are the other group. Shih tzus, maltese, lhasa apsos, yorkies and plenty of doodles grow hair straight down over the eye, and every blink drags it across the surface. Then there are dogs with loose lower lids, like bloodhounds and some spaniels, where the lid sits away from the eye and collects grit.

If your dog is in one of those groups, run the check once a week. It takes a minute and you will catch changes while they are still small.

What usually put it there

The causes I see on the van fall into a fairly short list.

• Face hair growing over the eye and dragging across it with every blink
• Shampoo that got in during a bath and was not rinsed out properly
• A scratch from a branch, a cat, or the dog’s own back foot
• A grass seed or a piece of grit caught under the lid
• Allergies, which usually show up in both eyes and come with itchy skin and ears
• A blocked tear duct, which leaves a rust colored stain running down the face
• Dry eye, where the dog does not make enough tears and the surface goes dull and sticky

The cause matters because the treatments pull in different directions. Something that soothes an allergy can make a scratch worse. That is why I never hand out drops, and it is why a vet will usually put a green dye on the eye to check for a scratch before prescribing anything.

What to do while you wait for the vet

There is a safe list, and it is short.

1. Wash your hands, then wet a clean cotton pad or a soft cloth with plain warm water.
2. Wipe from the inner corner outward, in one direction only, and use a fresh pad for the second eye.
3. Put a cone on if your dog is rubbing at the eye, because rubbing turns a small scratch into a big one.
4. Keep your dog out of the pool, off dusty trails and away from mowing until it clears.
5. Write down when it started and whether it is one eye or both, because that is the first thing your vet will ask.

Things to skip: human eye drops, leftover drops from a different dog or a different problem, salt water, tea bags, and anything with a steroid in it unless a vet prescribed it for this eye on this day. Steroids on a scratched eye can make it a lot worse.

When I stop the groom

A groom is a bath, a haircut and a nail trim, and none of that tells anyone what is wrong with an eye. Some days the useful thing I can do is put the clippers down. I stop and send the dog to a vet when I see any of these:

• The eye is held shut, or the dog pulls away when my hand gets near it
• The surface looks cloudy, blue or dull instead of shiny
• There is thick yellow or green discharge
• The lid or the skin around the eye is swollen
• The third eyelid, the pink flap in the inner corner, is up over part of the eye
• The dog has rubbed the skin around the eye raw

Owners sometimes ask me to do the groom anyway, since the van is already parked outside. I understand that, but shampoo and a dryer near a sore eye will not help, and starting medicine a day earlier usually shortens the whole thing. We reschedule and nobody makes a fuss about it.

What happens on grooming day

Groomers see a dog’s face up close, in good light, every few weeks. Owners see their dog every day, and a change that comes on slowly is hard to notice when it is in front of you all the time. That is why the groomer is often the first person to say something about an eye or an ear.

On a mobile visit the check happens in your driveway with your dog on its own. There is no drive to a salon, no cage time and no other dogs in the room, so the dog holds still and I can see what I am looking at. Kontota is SAFE certified as a brand, and corporate-owned locations require AKC Safety and Pet CPR and First Aid certification for their grooming staff. Franchise locations are independently owned and operated, so certifications can vary by location, and it is a fair thing to ask when you book.

A regular dog grooming appointment every four to eight weeks keeps the face hair short enough that it is not lying on the eye, and it puts a second set of eyes on your dog on a schedule. We run vans across the north Dallas suburbs, so if you are booking mckinney mobile pet grooming or dog grooming the colony tx, the groomer will look at the eyes and ears before the bath starts and tell you if something looks off.

Book a groom for your dog

If the hair on your dog’s face has grown down over the eyes, or you have been wiping the same corner every morning for a week, book a groom and mention it when you book. We will trim the face, keep the shampoo where it belongs, and tell you straight if we think it is a vet question instead. Contact us or call +1 800-216-6103.

Thanks for reading. If you are not sure about what you are seeing, call your vet first and book the groom after.