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Listen to this podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcast, or Spotify.
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Protect your pet’s vision with expert guidance from a board-certified veterinary ophthalmologist. In this episode, we sit down with an animal eye specialist to break down everything dog and cat owners need to know about eye health, common conditions, and when to seek professional help.
What You’ll Learn:
✅ Warning signs of eye problems every pet owner should recognize
✅ Common eye conditions in dogs and cats (cataracts, glaucoma, infections)
✅ How to properly examine your pet’s eyes at home
✅ Prevention strategies to keep your pet’s vision healthy
✅ When to see your regular vet vs. when you need a specialist
✅ Treatment options for eye injuries and chronic conditions
✅ Breed-specific eye issues to watch for
Expert veterinary ophthalmologist reveals critical eye health signs every dog and cat owner must know. Learn to recognize problems early, prevent vision loss, and understand when your pet needs specialist care.
Whether you’ve noticed your dog squinting, your cat’s eyes watering, or you just want to be proactive about your pet’s eye health, this conversation gives you practical, actionable knowledge straight from a veterinary eye expert. Perfect for pet owners who want to catch problems early and understand what’s normal vs. what needs attention.
veterinary ophthalmology, dog eye care, cat eye health, pet eye problems, canine cataracts, dog glaucoma, cherry eye treatment, pet vision care, veterinary specialist, animal eye doctor, dog eye infection, cat eye discharge
#DogHealth #CatHealth #VeterinaryMedicine #PetCare #DogEyeCare #CatEyeCare #VeterinaryOphthalmology #PetHealth
Dr Visser is the founder and owner of Charleston Animal Eye Specialists, you can visit her website here:
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Transcript:
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Chad: Welcome to Pack Talk Podcast, episode one thirty-three. Today, we’re very honored to have Dr. Hannah Visser. Am I saying that right?
Dr. Visser: You are.
Chad: Visser? Yeah. She is a eye specialist for dogs, cats, chameleons, horses, any animal. Probably people too. Anything with an eyeball. Fish?
Dr. Visser: Except for a person. Yeah, fish.
Chad: Fish, okay. We’ll talk about that, I guess. So, Hannah, thanks for joining us today.
Dr. Visser: Thank you for having me.
Chad: Want to get a quick background on you. So we know you’re from Charleston originally.
Dr. Visser: I am.
Chad: We know you went to College of Charleston. Can you kind of tell us where your story picks up at College of Charleston from there?
Dr. Visser: Yeah, of course. So I did go to College Charleston, which is a little bit different than the typical South Carolina student that wants to be a veterinarian. Most people tend to funnel into the ag school, which is Clemson, which has a great pre-veterinary program. And I don’t know, I guess that I tend to like want to make life difficult and go against the grain. I don’t know. But I didn’t want to go to Clemson. And so I went to College Charleston. And I think that when I was a college student, I knew that I had to do something different to stand out in the application process than all the Clemson kids that had these opportunities to do suture labs and interesting things with horses and cows and things. So I looked around and I thought, well, Charleston actually has this huge group of veterinary specialists in town. And so I kind of just started knocking on doors and saying, like, can I come hang out and see some specialty things? And so I went and hung out with a surgeon, a dermatologist, an internist. And kind of immediately when I started with ophthalmologists, I just kind of fell in love and became like an eyeball nerd. So a little bit different in that when I went to veterinary school, I was actually already an eyeball nerd and wanted to do what I’m doing now. So that was a little bit unique. And I think it did help to see all kinds of specialists and just kind of have a broader view of what veterinary medicine could be before I even went to school. But I ended up getting into Georgia, so I’m a Georgia bulldog. Yeah, super proud and had a really great experience at Georgia. And then after that, I matched with an internship in Indiana. And that was a rough transition for a Southern girl to go to Indiana. But I had a tremendous mentor there. He was great.
Chad: Was that eyeball focused?
Dr. Visser: So the first one was a rotating internship. So most doctors have to do a rotating internship after vet school, which is kind of like the last year vet school, just on steroids. You get a little bit more primary case responsibility, but you’re doing a lot of ER work, and then you’re rotating through the different specialties. So mine was at a large, small animal only multi-specialty hospital. I’m right outside of Indianapolis. And then I did a specialty internship after that for a year, where I just did eyes, and then I matched for a residency, which was really exciting in Texas, in Houston, Texas. And so that’s when I got to really delve into everything. And yeah, my mentor there was an older British guy, and he loved exotics, so I got a lot of experience with exotics.
Chad: I was about to say in Texas, like they usually have a lot of exotic animals, right?
Dr. Visser: They do, yeah. Well, the laws are a little bit softer, I think, there, right?
Chad: Well, it’s Texas. You’re not going to tell Texas what to do.
Dr. Visser: No, you don’t. Exactly. So actually, my mentor had a personal collection of snakes that was very large.
Chad: Venomous or non-venomous? Everything. So you’re hanging out with a bunch of snakes.
Dr. Visser: Yeah. I hung out with a bunch of snakes, yeah. And so, I mean, it was kind of hysterical. He had a snake dealer that would come to the office and drop off the snakes that he had ordered. We shared an office, and so I would like tootle back there, and there’d be a bag on my desk, and you don’t open the bag. You learn really quickly that you don’t open it. And so there would be mambas and things like that on the desk. What in the world? I know. So he was eccentric, for sure, but really amazing, a nasing guy. His name is Millichamp, the same name as my office cat, I mean my office cat after my venture, who’s still alive and practicing. He thinks it’s a hoot.
Chad: What about these snakes? Did he get you to look at their eyes and stuff?
Dr. Visser: Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. They have, it’s really common for them to have issues with shedding their skin. I’m sure that you’ve seen a snake having trouble shedding their skin.
Chad: But their eye actually sheds too, right?
Dr. Visser: Exactly, yeah. They have this covering called a spectacle that is supposed to shed with the rest of their skin, and sometimes it gets stuck there. And that can be because of a lack of humidity in their environment, or honestly, sometimes we just have no idea why they’re not shedding. But we have to commonly pop those off because they can get abscesses or infections underneath them. So yeah, he was constantly bringing in these snakes that were very venomous and be like, Visser, I need you to pop the spectacle off, and I’m gonna hold it, and I would just, oh my gosh. I know, probably like-
SPEAKER_3: Did you ever get bit?
Dr. Visser: No, I didn’t, thankfully. He was great. One time, oh, the funniest was one time, so we were just, I was just cowboy all the time with these snakes, so one time, he had this reticulated python that was like probably twenty feet long, maybe eighteen feet long. I may be exaggerating, could be a fish story, but she was a big girl, and her name was Cindy Crawford, because she had a little mole right here, but she was egg bound, so one time, I remember he brought her in in this box, and I was like, what are we doing today? He was like, well, she’s egg bound, we need to get these, so here I am milking eggs up into this incision, he made one incision, and you have to milk the eggs up through it to get them out. Anyways, I’m going off on a tangent, but there were times where we did things that were non-eyeball related to snakes, because it was his snakes. But yeah, so we worked with Houston Zoo, so we got a lot of experience with things at Houston Zoo, which is an incredible zoo, and I had a great time in Houston.
Chad: Any like ant eaters that you guys worked on? Do you remember?
Dr. Visser: We did see an ant eater. I’m trying to remember, it was like a variety of an ant eater that has a softer nose. I forgot what it was called. Yeah, I remember that they really liked to eat bananas. They were feeding it bananas as I was trying to work on it. But yeah, ant eaters, lemurs, owls.
Chad: Oh, owls, really?
Dr. Visser: Yeah, a couple of birds, like birds of prey get a lot of ocular issues. So we saw a lot of those. Elephants, we saw elephants, snow leopards and then like lions.
Chad: Do they sedate those when you work on them?
Dr. Visser: If it’s a baby, usually we can examine like the cubs and then, but if it’s a big one, yeah, they’re totally out. It’s interesting because like you’re doing an exam as the doctor and the patient’s very sedated and then there’s someone right behind you with a giant gun.
Chad: Golly.
Dr. Visser: In case it wakes up. I know, it’s a little weird. It’s not the normal, but yeah, it’s a sobering moment. It’s a sobering moment.
Chad: Well, when they’re sedated, does it change the way their eye exam goes?
Dr. Visser: Great question. It’s very challenging. That’s a really good question, to do an exam on a sedated patient because oftentimes sedation causes their eyes to roll and so you can’t always get a great look. It also can change a lot of our diagnostics, like the pressure within the eye. So it’s never ideal, but sometimes it’s-
Chad: It’s too dangerous without it.
Dr. Visser: Exactly. So the zoos are great because they’re so into training the animals to present different parts of their bodies. So the trainers are just amazing. They can get these, sea lions have a lot of ocular issues. So I’m thinking of sea lions in particular. All the sea lions that you see in zoos are typically trained to have their eye up against something so that we can do exams on them and things like that. So they’re trying to get on scale so they can get weighed. So the zoos are great. The tougher ones are like the sanctuaries and things that are a little bit more hands off because those animals just haven’t been trained to allow us to do exams without sedation.
Chad: There’s probably an elephant eye, the biggest eye you’ve ever dealt with or is there something else?
Dr. Visser: Great question. Elephant eye is pretty big. That might be the largest. I mean, horse eyes are pretty large too. So yeah, I’m trying to, I don’t know which one’s bigger, honestly, elephant or horse. I can’t remember. They’re pretty similar.
Chad: It sounds like with your mentor down in Houston, you’re working on his personal snakes more than you were other animals.
Dr. Visser: We won’t tell corporate about that, but it might be true.
Chad: That sounds like a great, great, great. How many years were you there for?
Dr. Visser: Just three.
Chad: Three years? Okay, that’s super cool. Then what did you do after that?
Dr. Visser: I came back to Charleston and worked with a group in Charleston and then decided to open up my own practice. It was during COVID that I made that decision, which was interesting. So while I was doing that, I actually moved down to West Palm Beach and practiced for a group there. It was supposed to be a couple of months and it evolved into about a year because I loved it. It was a great place to work and a great place to live. But then once the building here was done and I moved back to Charleston and opened Charleston Animal Eye Specialists.
Chad: Awesome. Awesome.
Dr. Visser: Yeah.
Chad: So you’ve been doing this for several years now. And can you tell us some of the stories that you have of the craziest eyes that you’ve dealt with, whether it’s an eye falling out.
Dr. Visser: You might lose listeners. Eyeballs are definitely not for everyone. So someone might want to fast forward a few minutes if eyeballs weird them out. But they’re part of Halloween decorations, right? So they scare a lot of people. But I’ve definitely had, unfortunately, dogs. Most of the trauma that we have that involves really scary things to the eye, involves another dog.
Chad: Like a dog bite?
Dr. Visser: Yeah, a dog bite. And oftentimes, it’s their housemate. And they’ll have co-existed for a long time. And I don’t know what. They’re saying something mean about their mom, or like, usually it’s over food. But, and then they’re just like frighteningly accurate. They go for each other’s eyes so frequently. So we unfortunately, probably once or twice a month, have a dog come in with their eye no longer in their body.
Chad: Oh, really? Is it hanging out or is it out completely?
Dr. Visser: I’ve had both. Most of the time, it’s kind of hanging. I know. I have had one person come to me with a dog in one hand and an eyeball on another.
Chad: Oh my gosh.
Dr. Visser: And ask me if they could reattach it.
Chad: Oh my gosh.
Dr. Visser: I know. The kind of the funniest part was that they had put the eye in milk because that’s what you put teeth in when you want to reattach teeth.
Chad: Really?
Dr. Visser: Yeah. I didn’t know that. Yeah. If you ever have, like if you were to knock out a tooth, you put it in like a little glass of milk and bring it to your dentist. And so this person had put this eyeball in milk and I was like, I’m so sorry. I can’t reattach eyes. Like that one isn’t going to work. But yeah, that is unfortunately somewhat common. And sometimes we can replace them and other times we have to remove them. So the blood supply to the eye comes in by the muscles around the eye. And so those are what get torn when the eyes like force forward, traumatically. So if it doesn’t have a blood supply, it’s not going to do well long term. But I’ve seen other trauma that’s interesting. I think my favorite are fishhooks.
Chad: Oh, really? Fishhook in the eye?
Dr. Visser: Yeah. Yeah. Yep, they’re fishing with their dog on their boat, on the dock. And either the dog got too excited and close to a fish or somebody’s bad at casting, I guess.
Chad: Oh my gosh.
Dr. Visser: And you end up with a fishhook in the eye. And that’s really interesting because you can’t, if you know a fishhook and a barb, you can’t just pull out. You have to go through. So those are, I like those things that kind of let me be creative, especially in the OR. And kind of like think about them a little bit creatively and figure out how I’m going to do things.
Chad: So these people, when this happens to them, are they like calling you, they’re freaking out? You know, and you’re like, yeah, we got to do surgery.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, it’s typically very emotional. Like emergencies with your pet are super emotional, period, because it’s your baby. And because they’re innocent and we kind of identify them, again, as our babies. But then eyes in particular have an emotional attachment. So sometimes emotions go from zero to one hundred when it comes to eyes. So yeah, thankfully, usually it’s not life-threatening. I can’t think of an instance where it actually is life-threatening, to be honest. So, you know, part of my job is honestly just calming people down and just like alleviating their stress and talking to them about how, you know, no matter what, we’re going to be okay.
Chad: So one time there was a rescue dog. He was a German shepherd. He was at a rescue, I guess, when he was young, he got some kind of infection in his eyes. I don’t know what it was, but they had to remove both eyes. So, you know, dogs, they can smell, they can hear. So we trained the dog. He was, he lived a great life. He’s passed away now, but he lived a great life, you know, and we trained him when he had no eyes. Then he went and lived with somebody with no eyes, had a great life, you know, so it’s like, they’re so adaptable. Right. But cats, I’m wondering, it seems like they’re more, cats are even more adaptable actually.
Dr. Visser: Okay. Believe it or not, a blind cat is like, I tell people, if you want to do, if you have it in your heart to want to do a disabled animal, start with a blind cat, because it is hardly any different than a visual cat.
Chad: Okay.
Dr. Visser: I’ve seen cats with no eyes catch birds outside. It’s, yeah, it’s crazy.
Chad: They got that crazy perception and sense.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, they’ve got sense, like they’ve got their whiskers and they can hear really well. As much as I love my job for animals, like their sense of smell, their sense of, you know, hearing is just so much better than their vision. Their vision is actually probably one of the worst senses that they have. So, yeah, so we have so many, unfortunately, animals that we can’t keep vision or restore vision in, but they have excellent qualities of life. It’s probably every ophthalmologist little like soap box, like don’t euthanize an animal because they can’t see, because it might be a transition period where you’re learning a different way to communicate with them. You’re learning, you know, what their limitations could be. But after you get through that transition period, your animal is going to do amazing. So yeah, there are very, very few animals that can’t adapt to that.
Chad: Right, right. That’s good. Yeah.
Dr. Visser: Yeah.
Chad: One of my family members, when I was, or when they were younger, they had like a chihuahua. And it got into a fight with a snake and the snake bit it right on the eye.
Dr. Visser: Oh, that’s not good. Yeah, that’s never going to go well. Yeah, yeah.
Chad: Some chihuahuas’ eyes like bulge out a little bit, so you had the bulge out and he’s still a chihuahua.
Dr. Visser: He was like a little pirate. I get some people that are like, no, I have a pirate cat or a pirate dog.
Chad: So we’ve talked about a lot of animals that you’ve seen, you know, you’ve worked with, especially in Houston. For sure. What would you say is the most unique animal?
Dr. Visser: The most unique animal.
Chad: That you’ve ever worked with with us.
Dr. Visser: The neatest experience that I had for sure was about a year and a half ago. There’s actually a primate sanctuary in Charleston, I don’t know if you know it.
Chad: They escaped recently, right? Did they?
Dr. Visser: I missed that. They might have.
Chad: There was a bunch that escaped.
Dr. Visser: They had to locate them. In Charleston?
Chad: Yeah. They went off into the woods from the sanctuary.
Dr. Visser: I believe that, unfortunately. But they’re amazing. They do amazing work. And they came to me with a gibbon, which is they have mostly gibbons at the sanctuary, which is the lowest level of ape species. So not a monkey, but an ape. And I got to do cataract surgery on him, which was really cool. In general, I kind of joke with people that I don’t save lives and that like my, you know, this is, you know, we’re only doing eyeballs. We’re not saving lives here if I try to like to downplay what I do. But in that case, actually, this animal was having a really hard time adjusting. They were having to make quality of life decisions for him. They were finding him like on the ground of his cage, which is not normal for that species to be on the ground. They can walk on the ground, but it’s really abnormal. And then he was really aggressive towards the mate that they had for him, so he had to be solitary. So they were considering euthanizing this ape. He was a forty-four-year-old, ex-cancer research ape. I know, his name was Peppy, or his name still is Peppy. And yeah, so it was actually kind of like a life or death situation for him to regain his vision. So we did cataract surgery on him and he’s doing great. So that was…
Chad: That’s cool.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, that was a really cool, a little stressful, but really cool day.
Chad: Did they bring him here to your office?
Dr. Visser: They did, yeah.
Chad: Did you sedate him when he’s here?
Dr. Visser: He was sedated when he was on the drive and then we fully anesthetized him when he got here. Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, for sure. And I had a lot of help with that. I had amazing nurses and I had another doctor with me, so that was huge. I can’t do all that by myself.
Chad: Yeah, that’s a big job right there.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, but it was really cool.
Chad: What about like lizards? I know you said chameleons earlier.
Dr. Visser: Chameleons are tough because it’s really hard to do an eye exam on a chameleon because they can move their eyes so rapidly everywhere. Really nerdy fact, so the lens within the eye, it’s the center of the eye that helps to focus lights, where a cataract forms, things like that. Chameleons actually have the only negatively powered lens in the eye. Everybody else has positive powers and they have a negative ones. Their eyeballs are really nerdy and cool. But yeah, I’ve never, I’m trying to think. I don’t think I’ve ever done surgery on a chameleon. I’ve done a few snakes because-
Chad: Because you know a guy.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, But I don’t think I’ve ever had to do anything on a chameleon. I’m trying to think. Bunnies, pretty common. We see a fair amount of bunnies. And so we do surgery on them somewhat commonly. But yeah, thankfully not a ton of reptile surgery. I mean, they’re basically dinosaurs. So they do pretty well on their own. We’re just kind of here to try to help occasionally. Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Chad: Well, talking mainly about dogs, maybe a little bit of cats.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, absolutely.
Chad: What would you say is some of the main important aspects of regular eye exams for dogs, maybe cats too, but focusing on dogs?
Dr. Visser: Great question. So in general, like general practitioners do such a great job, general veterinarians, of doing an eye exam as part of the routine exam. Now, if you’re with your pet at a general exam and you notice that the doctor didn’t look in their eyes, you might just want to gently suggest or remind them that that’s part of the whole deal. Because it is important to have them looked at at least once a year. I think for some dogs in different fields, maybe like guide dogs or sport dogs, like agility dogs and things like that, it might be more important to have a routine exam with an ophthalmologist where they’re using their vision for a particular job. But for most of our general couch potato, companion animals, general practitioners do a great job at catching things that are abnormal or concerning and sending them in to us to have a look at. So hugely important because eyeballs, they tend to rapidly fall apart.
Chad: When something happens, you’re saying they start to…
Dr. Visser: Yeah, things just rapidly fall apart. And so sadly, oftentimes, we only have twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours to address something before it’s a blinding situation. Yeah. So I tell people all the time, like if your animal is showing signs of squinting, discomfort, pain, try not to wait because it can be a lot easier to address sooner rather than later. So, yeah.
Chad: So like if someone, you know, like whenever you take your dog into your general vet, they do like the pressure test where they’re looking at the pressure, they’re looking in the eye.
Dr. Visser: You got it. Exactly.
Chad: Those are all normal things. But if your dog’s doing like abnormal things like squinting, what about excessive discharge or like bright green discharge?
Dr. Visser: Great questions. Yep, that’s not normal, right? Like a little bit of sleep in your dog’s eye every morning is pretty normal. But if you’re cleaning your dog’s eyes multiple times a day and they’re having lots of goopy discharge, that’s not normal if they’re abnormally red. And eyeball can only kind of do one thing and that’s get red and squinty. And it means it could mean a lot of different things. But in general, those are the concerns. Other concerns like cloudiness, changes in vision, especially acute changes in vision. That’s a big deal. Meaning like if your dog wakes up and he seems non-visual and he was visual yesterday, that’s an emergency. He should be seen. So those are definitely concerns, I guess, in general. So red eyes, cloudy eyes, changes in vision, discharge, and squinting or pawing or rubbing at the eyes are the big alarm bells.
Chad: Yeah. What about foreign objects getting into the eye? Obviously, that does happen.
Dr. Visser: It does. It does. The most common things are thankfully just like little seeds that get stuck because they’re down in the brush. Their eye level is like, right? Like our like calf level usually. And so all the little seeds and things, they love to get like stuck on their eyes. But we definitely can see more traumatic things. Those are usually pretty easy to deal with by just kind of flushing the surface. But we see other things like, unfortunately, I’ve seen like hay going through a cornea, or again, we talked about fish hooks and things like that. So there are other things that can happen, but typically, thank God, it’s usually just like a little particle or seed or something that can get washed out. For sure, yeah. And if you’ve got a dog that you regularly do things outside with, like go to the beach or maybe you have a hunting dog or you hike a lot and things like that, I tell people, it’s always smart to have like a bottle of rinse in your car. Hopefully, everybody has got like a first aid kit of some kind that they can adapt for their dog, or maybe you have a specific first aid kit for your dog. But it’s hugely important to have eye wash in there because hunters call them like tailgate exams, where like when they’re done with their day, they pop their dog up on their tailgate and they’re going to do an exam from snoot to tail. And they always do it, you should always do it the exact same way to help you not forget any part of the body. And part of that should be a flush for their eyes. And you’d be amazed at what comes out. You just kind of gently pull your dog’s nose down and then you flush from above so gravity can help kind of rinse that whole surface. And that’s going to massively decrease your chance of having something that gets stuck in the conjunctival sack, which is like the little pink sack that your eyelids make. And then on the surface of the eye. So yep, so it’s part of the tailgate check at the end of the day is to have just eye flush. And you can buy it at like the pharmacy, just like a plain flush is a big way of preventing seeing me.
Chad: Yeah, now do you put that flush like right on the eye or you spray right above the top of the eye and it just comes down?
Dr. Visser: I usually kind of lift up above and pull their eyelid up and then rinse directly on the eye. So yeah, if it’s just a plain saline, you can’t hurt anything, so yeah.
Chad: Bring some treats with you, that way your dog likes it.
Dr. Visser: Make it a positive thing, yeah, absolutely. And as part of your routine thing again, or maybe you’re a frequent beach goer, you might get tons of sand out and things like that. And just removing those irritations are gonna prevent a lot of things. But yeah, make it a positive thing, make a cookie about it, all that fun stuff.
Chad: Let’s say someone’s scheduling to do a visit with an eye specialist like yourself. What are some things they can expect? I’m sure it depends on what they’re here to see you for.
Dr. Visser: It does, but there’s some general things. So in general, when they come in for an eye exam, we usually start with a couple of different diagnostics. So typically we measure their tear production. Dry eye is a common issue with a lot of small breed dogs. Usually, we think of Shih Tzus, French Bulldogs, or littler dogs that have a decrease in tear production. So we test for that by measuring their tear production. We use these little things called Schirmer tear strips. And they’re like little pieces of filter paper that you put in their lower eyelid, and then you measure that for a minute. And so you’re counting how many tears they make.
Chad: Oh, wow.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, so that’s the first test that we usually do. And then we also typically measure the pressure in the eye, which we kind of mentioned.
Chad: There’s a device you use?
Dr. Visser: Yeah, there’s a couple of different ones. Okay. Yeah, and so there’s different ones, and they all work a little bit differently. But they can either measure the pressure by how quickly a probe rebounds off of an eye. It kind of looks like a gun a little bit. It’s called a tono pen. It’s like a black, typically, or sometimes white little gun-like device. And then there’s a pen one that’s called a tono pen, and that measures the pressure by how much force you have to apply to the eye to flatten the tip of the pen. So anyways, but you’re measuring the interocular pressure, or as we typically call it, the IOP, for short. And then we usually stain the eye, and that’s in order to look for ulcers or wounds on the surface of the eye, too. So that’ll make your pet’s eyes bright green, and it’ll oftentimes filter down through their nose, because tears actually drain out your nose, believe it or not.
Chad: That’s crazy.
Dr. Visser: Yeah. It’s kind of wild. So yeah, so we’ll put the stain on their eye, and then you’ll come in a few minutes later, and it’ll be like out their little nose. So yeah, so we do those three tests on almost every single initial exam, and then the ophthalmologist should come into the room with your pet. The ophthalmologist will have to get like really close to your pet’s face. That’s one thing that sometimes can be a little bit challenging for some pets, because oftentimes they haven’t had a stranger other than, you know, people not in their parents, up really close to their face. So, sometimes we do have to use like muzzles and things just to keep everybody safe. But they oftentimes respond really well to us, because we don’t typically have to take their temperature or poke them with needles. So, we get away with a little more. Sometimes they like us better than their regular vet, which is great for me. But we typically do get right up in their face, and we do an exam with a microscope. And then we put a headset on just like they’re very similar instruments. So, what you see at your optometrist or your ophthalmologist, all the same human-grade equipment.
Chad: Bright light.
Dr. Visser: Bright light, yeah, which is like the worst, right? Every time I go to my optometrist, I have immense empathy for my patients because I’m like, this is so uncomfortable. And I do it all day, every day, dogs. Yeah, bright light, looking at their retina, looking at the intraocular structures. And then the ophthalmologist should sit down and describe everything with an owner. I think it’s hugely important to take the time to explain what’s going on with your pet, the treatment options, and what the follow-up’s gonna be. So, yeah, so that’s kinda, in short, it’s not typically a very long process. And yeah, they might recommend additional diagnostics depending on what’s going on. But the majority, eyeballs are really cool because we can see so much on our exams. We definitely have more diagnostics, but most of the things that we do are just diagnosed based on the exam, which I love as part of my job. I hate reading blood work and things like that. It’s just not my strong suit. So I love being able to visually see something.
Chad: Yeah. Yeah. Most of the time, if there’s a scratch on the eye or something like that, what’s like someone’s dog, they were playing in the dirt or something, little piece of rock or scratch.
Dr. Visser: Yeah.
Chad: Is that like a, hey, you’re going to put this cream on it or ointment on it, or is there something else you typically do for something like that?
Dr. Visser: Great question. So ulcers are like wounds on the surface of the eye and they vary in severity. So the ones that I get most worried about are the ones that have bacterial infection involved or if they’re really deep in the cornea. The cornea is that clear windshield of the eye and it’s not very thick. It’s less than a millimeter thick. So I know. So if we’re talking about, if you can see an indentation or like a crater on the surface, then that means that that spot is really weak. And when they’re really weak spots, they can rupture or have a hole through the eye. And then we get a whole lot more complications involved. So when I see an ulcer, again, I care about the depth of it and whether or not it has bacterial infection. Bacteria love to eat collagen. It’s like one of their favorite things and the cornea is made of collagen. So when they’re infected, they get deep very quickly.
Chad: Really?
Dr. Visser: Yeah. And it’s one of those things that I was saying like twenty-four to forty hours can make a big difference if you have an infected ulcer. So treatment of ulcers really depends on how severe they are. So it might be, say you have a puppy and he just has a superficial ulcer because he was playing with his friend or something like that and got a little abrasion. Then it’s typically like he used some ointment or an eye drop to keep it clean. It’s an antibiotic. Antibiotic jobs are just to keep the surface clean and then allow his body to heal it. That should resolve within five to seven days without any complication.
Chad: Collagen will kind of reproduce and turn over.
Dr. Visser: Exactly. Those epithelial cells will reproduce and they’ll slide over the surface, and then the dog should be comfortable because the nerve endings underneath that surface are covered and we should be good to go. If it’s a deeper one or an infected one, sometimes it involves multiple antibiotics, sometimes it involves surgery. If it’s a really deep one that we’re worried about becoming a perforation or a rupture, but that can be weeks and weeks of treatment and multiple medications. So the gamut is large and so it just depends on what it looks like.
Chad: Yeah. Are you able to tell if it’s infected by looking at it or you have to do it?
Dr. Visser: Great question. Yeah. We have a lot of telltale signs of infection that we can see. We can see like white blood cells in the cornea. Oftentimes, what owners will notice will be a lot of discharge and a lot more pain. So pus-like discharge and then infections are a lot more painful for animals. Sometimes they’ll tell me, yeah, he was squinty and then all of a sudden yesterday he got a lot more squinty and he got a lot more goopy discharge and I’m like, that’s when we got infected. But we can take a sample of the cells on the surface to look for bacteria and underneath the microscope look, we can also, that can tell us if there’s bacteria present, doesn’t tell us what kind or if they’re going to be responsive to our antibiotics, so we do culture things occasionally. The tough part about eyeballs is that the culture takes five to seven days to send to the lab and all these things and by that time an infection could have ruined an eye. So sometimes we have to kind of shoot from the hip and take a guess and hopefully we get it right.
Chad: Play it safe.
Dr. Visser: Play it safe usually means use a lot of drops and the owners are not thrilled with us because it’s a lot of work. So typically we can take a sample from the eye itself or we can just kind of guess.
Chad: Now some of the basics of canine vision especially as compared to what humans are used to because I feel like a lot of people they have dogs, they might perceive that the dog perceives the world like they do. But there’s a lot of things that are different obviously, like you already mentioned dogs and cats too, like they got better hearing, they got better smell, their senses are different.
Dr. Visser: That’s a great point. Yeah, you probably know this a lot with what you do.
Chad: I’ve tried to study it as much as I can, but also just being around dogs I know, I know their nose is going to work more than their eyes.
Dr. Visser: You try to think like a dog.
Chad: Exactly, I try to.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, that’s hugely important.
Chad: What are some major, what are the basics of how dog’s eyes work, like color, night vision, these kind of things.
Dr. Visser: Great question. The majority of the differences occur because their retinas are different. The retina is the thin nervous system lining at the back of the eye. It’s like a really big thin nerve and it’s what takes all of the particles of light that we see and makes it into an electrical signal and ships it to the brain. So it’s hugely important for what we see and there are different kinds of cells within that retina and dogs have a different mixture than humans do and so that’s why they see a little bit differently. The vast majority of the rest of their eye is very very similar to people. But they don’t see color the same. Most people know that. They don’t see reds very well or oranges. They see mostly like blues and yellows. They call it dichromatic vision because two colors, right?
Chad: What does red and orange to a dog? Does that look like a gray? Do you know?
Dr. Visser: That’s a great question. I believe it looks like a gray or like a yellow. Kind of.
Chad: So it kind of blends in with those same color patterns.
Dr. Visser: Exactly. So think like yellows, grays and blues and kind of like those variations of those colors. Yeah. So they see dichromatic vision, different colors. They actually see better at night than us. And they see a lot better like motion. They see motion a little bit differently. I’m trying to think of what else. Kind of the same for cats as well. Cats actually don’t have the most amazing vision, I guess.
Chad: Really? I always thought their vision was better.
Dr. Visser: I know, right?
Chad: Because I watch them and they’re like looking and I see them looking at and stalking things.
Dr. Visser: And they see again, they see motion really, really well. And they see at night much better than we do. But they actually have less visual acuity, is what it’s called, than dogs do or people. So there definitely are some differences. And then one thing that helps them see, that we think, at least we hypothesize helps them see well at night is, you know how at night when you flash a light in a dog’s eye, it glows? Or if you take a picture and you see, they have an extra structure behind their retina called a tapetum, and it’s like a mirror, basically. And it can help kind of magnify light, is the thought.
Chad: The moonlight or the starlight or whatever.
Dr. Visser: Exactly. And the thing that gets me really excited is that different breeds have different colors. And it’s interesting when they’re-
Chad: That’s crazy.
Dr. Visser: Yeah. So like Spaniels have more red and orange and things like that. I have setters as dogs and theirs are orange. Frenchies usually have this beautiful kind of teal or aqua colored ones, or a deep kind of cobalt blue color. So anyways, I’m a true eyeball nerd. These things fascinate me.
Chad: That’d be cool to have a graphic of the- Yeah.
Dr. Visser: Oh, yeah, yeah. There’s some out there of all the different ones. Yeah, I’ll try to get you one for your website or something like that. Yeah, it’s really cool. And so there’s different colors and that’s fascinating. And then when they’re puppies, they’re all this like violet color.
Chad: Oh really?
Dr. Visser: Like itty bitty puppies, like eight week old puppies. And then as they mature and get to be more like twenty to thirty weeks, they get their true colors. So it’s all developing still even as a young dog with their eyes open.
Chad: So just to make sure I hear you correctly, like if I were at night time, I had like a flashlight and I’m looking around and like my dogs are in the yard or another animal like maybe a goat or a cat. If their eyes are reflecting light, that means that their night vision is better. They have a better night vision, right?
Dr. Visser: That’s a great question. So in general, you’re going to see all of them should reflect back at you because it’s a normal structure for all of them. So it’s a structure that helps their night vision. Now, say you have a dog and their pupils are really big, so you’re able to see more of that reflection, and you’re like, that dog’s reflection is really shiny. Like, I see a lot of that shine. That can be something abnormal. So the retina is on top of that layer, and so you can kind of think about it like a mirror with a piece of fabric over it. The retina being the fabric, the mirror behind it being that structure called the tapetum. And if the retina or the fabric gets really thin, you’re going to see more of the mirror. And so sometimes I’ll have people come in and be like, yeah, my dog’s vision doesn’t seem normal. They really don’t seem to see well at night. And their eyes are super shiny. And I’m like, oh no, this is bad. Because your retina is very thin. And so that is, when your retina thins or degenerates, that’s typically called, it’s usually called a condition called progressive retinal atrophy or PRA. So it’s somewhat common in Labradors, in, gosh, like poodles. I’m trying to think, cocker spaniels. But so it’s normal to see shiny, but there’s such thing as too shiny. Too shiny, yeah.
Chad: Is that normally an age-related thing? As they age, this retina just starts to deteriorate? Or maybe it could be genetic?
Dr. Visser: Great question. Yeah. So it starts off as genetic. So it’s always in their genes, but it does progress, aka the name progressive retinal atrophy. So usually these dogs seem pretty normal as puppies, or even young adults, which is tricky because that’s the time that we typically breed dogs, right? We’re breeding the two-year-olds, the three-year-olds, and they would have normal vision. And then as those dogs age, usually it sets in middle age to older, so six, eight, nine, ten. That’s when their vision’s abnormal. And unfortunately, before we had blood test, this was a problem because we had bred all these dogs and passed along these genes. Thankfully, now there are blood tests to detect the condition before it shows up clinically. And so a good dog breeder should have certain breeds of dogs that they’re breeding should have these tests run beforehand so that you know that the puppies aren’t gonna be affected.
Chad: Yeah. Crazy. And like they can, you know, figure out how to keep the genetics from having that condition as time goes on.
Dr. Visser: Yeah. It’s a huge part of our job as veterinarians is helping the public identify conditions that are genetic so that we can, if you are someone who buys a purebred dog, try to buy the healthiest dog that you can. There’s no guarantees.
Chad: Stay away from backyard breeders. I’ll tell you that.
Dr. Visser: Right. And the backyard breeders aren’t doing genetic tests on their dogs. They’re not doing anything. Yeah. So I think it’s in everyone’s eulogence, if they are going to purchase a dog and not rescue a dog, to do that digging in the breeders, make sure that they’re doing all the things they should.
Chad: Now, do dogs see better as sun setting and sun rising versus straight nighttime versus straight daytime?
Dr. Visser: They’re gonna have, daytime vision is still better than nighttime vision. It’s not like a super see at night. So they should still see better in the day and then night should become a little bit more difficult, but they see better than us at night, if that makes sense. Yeah.
Chad: Can you talk to us about the third eyelid?
Dr. Visser: Sure.
Chad: We always hear about this with dogs.
Dr. Visser: It’s like a magical creature, right? Everybody’s like, what is that? Yeah.
Chad: Everyone sees lights. Well, some people don’t see it at all in their lives.
Dr. Visser: I feel like it’s hugely disappointing as a structure for everybody. So I’m really sorry if this sounds really boring because it’s like has, again, this reputation of being magical and it’s not really. So it’s an extra membrane that is in the corner, the inside corner of the eye, dogs, cats. Yep. Really most animal species have it, but it’s in that corner. And it’s basically, it’s got a little piece of cartilage in it that’s shaped like a T. And then at the base of that, there is a tear gland. So cats and dogs have two tear glands. They’ve got one that lives up here that produces the vast majority of tears. About two thirds are produced by this gland. And then about a third are produced by that third eyelid gland. And you’re not supposed to be able to see it. It’s supposed to be kind of tucked down in that corner underneath the eyelids.
Chad: So it actually never comes up and over the eye, right?
Dr. Visser: Well, the gland doesn’t. It shouldn’t. But the third eyelid can. So one of the third eyelids’ job is to protect the eye. So dogs are cool, cats are cool, because they actually have an extra muscle behind their eyeball, and they can physically pull their eyeball back. We can’t do it. What?
Chad: They can pull their eyeball back?
Dr. Visser: They can pull their eyeball back. It is called the retractor bulbi muscle. And so retract, pull back, bulb, meaning the globe itself, the eyeball itself. So they will pull their eyeball back if they see trauma coming, or if they’re in pain, sometimes they’ll do it as a response to pain. And then passively, that third eyelid comes up and covers the eye. So it serves as protection, because they may be pulling their eyeball back because they see something coming at them. And then that membrane covers it, because it’s a whole lot better to have something hurt that third eyelid than the eyeball itself. So the third eyelid is important because, again, protecting the eye and then it has that tear gland in it. That helps to produce tears. Tears are hugely important for the surface health of the eye. So they bathe the cornea, they give it nutrients, they flush it, all kinds of good stuff.
Chad: Another question for you, a little bit crazy. But there are some dogs that are super muscular, like that one has a pity, her name is JoJo.
Dr. Visser: JoJo has two pitties. That’s cute.
Chad: But JoJo, she used to have this condition, I don’t know if she still has it, where sometimes her eye would go wonky, kind of like wander.
Dr. Visser: He sees the third eyelid more.
SPEAKER_3: It was when she would bite, like if she chewed on stuff.
Dr. Visser: Oh, interesting. Would bulge.
Chad: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: So I just don’t let her chew on stuff.
Chad: Well, the vet back in the day, yeah, this was years ago, but the vet back in the day told them there was some kind of nerve that comes up through the neck into the eye. And whenever that nerve gets contracted with muscle, it would wonky that eye.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, they can kind of bulge. And they really, you’re right, it’s always really muscular dogs and those muscles around the eye. So there’s muscles around the eye. There’s, oh gosh, six of them. And then the one behind. And if those like really push forward, it can kind of push them. And she’s like, you know, got the, if it’s a stick, she’s like in the back, and she’s gnawing on them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: I was like scared it would pop out.
Dr. Visser: The other wild thing is that like, we have bone between like our teeth and our eyeballs. They don’t have bone, they just have muscles. Oh really? So yeah, so if you get a dog that like is a really aggressive chewer and she’s on a stick, they can actually kind of like push up on, into the eye area.
Chad: Holy cow. I know.
Dr. Visser: Or if you have a dog that you haven’t unfortunately been able to take care of their teeth or for a variety of reasons, and they get an abscess of their tooth root, that can affect their eyes. So sometimes what I do is actually go like, oh, this is mouth related, you know, and we need to go get our mouth looked at. Yeah, so mouth stuff can definitely affect the eye.
Chad: That happened to one of my dogs that just passed away when she was super young. She had like, her eye was popping out. And I was like, holy shit, I don’t know how I took her to the ER vet. They were like, there’s some kind of dental problem, you know?
Dr. Visser: Yep. Yep, or they’ll get sticks like behind their last molar.
Chad: Oh, like stuck in there?
Dr. Visser: Stuck in there, yeah. Or if you live in an area with porcupine, porcupine quills, apparently. I don’t know if dogs like to chew on them, or get blamed on them. And those are scary because porcupine quills migrate to other parts. So they can migrate to their eye.
Chad: If they get stabbed with it, you don’t realize it and it goes through.
Dr. Visser: Yep. And you may not even seen the quill. Or sometimes hunters that their dog gets quilled in there everywhere, but they miss one pulling it out and then it’ll migrate from the mouth up to the eye. That’s crazy. Yeah. I don’t live in an area with porcupine.
Chad: So muscular dogs can have problems where the muscles are too much.
Dr. Visser: Yeah. They can kind of push their eye forward. Yeah. I have forgotten the name of that condition, but it is kind of a condition. Yeah. It’s wild.
Chad: So you already talked a little bit about some routine things we can do with our dogs, like flushing them for outside, hunting, at the beach, whatever. Can you talk to some other preventative and healthy maintenance of eyes, like things that people can be doing just to prevent problems or keep their dog’s eyes good to go?
Dr. Visser: It’s a great question. I think that if you have a breed of dog that is a buggy-eyed dog, so we’re talking about the shih tzus, the fringes. These are the vast majority of my patients. The vast majority of my patients are cavaliers, fringes, shih tzus, and those dogs, we just are seeing too much of their eyeballs, because their eyelids are very long, and then the bony socket of the skull called the orbit, that’s supposed to hold the eye, is very shallow, and we have bred for this because we apparently like the appearance-
Chad: Aesthetic.
Dr. Visser: Of the buggy eye dog, so it’s kind of normal for them. But we have found the research that they blink less, they cover their eye less, so they’re just exposed, hanging in the breeze. They have less nerve endings to be sensitive to issues, so they tell us about concerns later. They’re less witty and irritated by things that they should be. So I think in general, if you own a dog like that, it’s just never a bad idea to lubricate their eyes before bed. Some of them sleep with their eyelids open. Like…
Chad: You got the Frenchie snoring, you’re looking at it, it’s like…
Dr. Visser: Yeah, and I’m over here as their doctor, like, how am I gonna help you? Eyelids are important, you’re supposed to close your eyeballs. But lubricating them before bed or in the morning can sometimes help.
Chad: Is that like a flush or a certain type of lubricant?
Dr. Visser: I like a gel or something like that. There’s a bunch over the counter that are coming different formulations and things like that, but I like a gel. It’s a little bit less messy than an ointment, but it hangs around a little bit longer than a drop. A drop dissipates from the surface of the eye within about twenty minutes, so a gel hangs around a little longer.
Chad: A gel, you just kind of put it in the… You just drop it on it.
Dr. Visser: You can put it anywhere. If you just hit the eyeball, it’ll coat the whole surface. And people often worry that they’re not able to get it, their dog may close their eyelids, even just getting it in the middle of the two eyelids. They’re gonna open their eye and it’ll work its way in. But that’s one thing. Other than that, I can’t think of anything else preventative. If you have a dog that likes to, it’s doing maybe a lot of agility work or is like hanging its head out the window, you could consider eye protection. There’s a couple of different products out there made for dogs.
Chad: Like doggie goggles.
Dr. Visser: Yep, doggie goggles, exactly. My favorite is a brand called Rec Specs, and they are very clearly adapted from a snowboarder. Goggles. They’re awesome though, because the lenses are interchangeable. So if your dog scratches them or things like that. Also, the straps go underneath their jaws, they’re just a little bit more comfortable for the dogs to wear. So those are my favorite Rec Specs. Also, their Instagram has the most amazing compilation of dogs looking like badasses. It’s just like all these German shepherds and police dogs that just look like, like total, they look like Top Gun.
Chad: That’s what the police and military dogs use as their Rec Specs for sure.
Dr. Visser: Exactly. Yeah. So, and they’re not, it’s not a very, it’s not a very old concept. Those have only been around for maybe five or six years, I think. So anyways, but that’s another option is protection, just for your eyes.
Chad: Yeah. What about a diet nutrition? Does that play into your eyes at all? Like, you know how they say eat carrots for people.
Dr. Visser: Great question. Yeah. Yeah. There is a vitamin. There’s a bunch of different vitamins on the market, but the only one that I think that in general I trust is one that was made by a veterinary ophthalmologist. All the stuff is kind of extrapolated from what we know about human medicine diet. So it’s got a lot of omega-threes and fatty acids, grape seed extract and lutein in it. It’s called Ocuglo.
Chad: Is that what you recommend for your people?
Dr. Visser: That’s, yeah, I try. I think that diet and nutrition, I believe in it wholeheartedly, but it’s very hard to test scientifically. So I’m not quite sure how much scientific data that we’ve got that it can prevent or slow down the progression of different ocular diseases in dogs, but nothing in it could hurt. And based on the research of people, it probably helps. That’s kind of the best that we’ve got, unfortunately. But in general, all the commercial-made dog foods should have the correct amino acids for your dog.
Chad: I know you mentioned collagen earlier, so I didn’t know. You get that from protein, it’ll just pull it out of the amino acids. Do you ever recommend people with severe eye problems supplement more collagen?
Dr. Visser: I haven’t recommended that, but I’ve always been kind of curious, especially in… So I fight wrinkles all the time in dogs. So all the wrinkly dogs, like the bulldogs, and the sharp haze and things like that. So what happens to those dogs is that they lose a large amount of collagen as they age and gravity. And then that loss of collagen becomes an issue for their upper eyelids because they will just get…
Chad: Oh, they’ll just come over the eye.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, it’ll roll. And then they’ve got hair rubbing on their eyes. How uncomfortable is that? It’s a condition called entropion. And I’ve always kind of wondered, like what if you supplement those dogs collagen like younger in life? But there’s no study that I know of, but if I ever own one as puppy, I’ll supplement it’s collagen and document it.
Chad: Well, I’ve had a Shih Tzu before I was training it. It had a problem where the hair would just always get into the… I was constantly…
Dr. Visser: You need the top knot, the ponytail. Like pull it all up. Yeah, we are constantly fighting Shih Tzu hair. And in the office, almost every Shih Tzu gets like a little face clean up. And we try to tell the groomers like, keep it really short. And yeah, I mean, the majority of the things that I fight are things that we’ve actually produced in dogs, like the wrinkles, like the hair, like we think that they’re cute. And then with their other eyeball, they kind of cause problems.
Chad: Well, the bulldogs especially, you got to clean those wrinkles out.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, the folds.
Chad: You’ve seen them where you open it, it’s like red, it’s like, dude, you got to clean this out.
Dr. Visser: Oh, for sure. And then I’m talking to people about like, sometimes we’ll reduce those folds, like we’ll make them smaller. And I mean, it’s kind of ironic because they bought the bulldog for the cute wrinkles, right? But it’s a health concern. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So definitely, collagen would be nice. We were talking about something else and then I forgot. I was going to say something about collagen or protein. I forgot.
Chad: I’m so sorry. I just know like for humans that our collagen, you know, as we age, our collagen reduces. So like increasing our own collagen supplementation.
Dr. Visser: For sure. Helps your skin.
Chad: Beneficial hair, nails, all that. So I didn’t know.
Dr. Visser: I hope in the future.
Chad: I’ve never looked into it for dogs, you know?
Dr. Visser: I hope in the future we have more research about that and maybe changing our diet for our pet based on like their optimal needs. But I am not aware of anything at the moment.
Chad: Yeah.
Dr. Visser: Cats, we do know about something in cats. So cats don’t, they have to eat taurine, which is a specific amino acid. It is one of the reasons that they are obligate carnivores. So I think in the eighties or the nineties, we had a few different cat foods that weren’t adding in taurine to their cat food. Or you’ve got some people that want to go off on their own and want to put their cat on a vegetarian diet or something like that. Yeah, and that actually directly affects their eyes because their retinas will start to degenerate or atrophy and they can go blind because of that condition. And then it also affects their heart muscles too. So it can be a fatal condition where their heart can be really affected. So all commercial cat foods now, thank God since the nineties, have taurine added to it. So it’s not something that you need to supplement for your cat. But it is, if you are doing a home cooked diet or something like that, it’s super important to make sure that they are getting enough taurine. You can test for it with like a blood test.
Chad: Oh, you can?
Dr. Visser: Yeah, you can. So that’s very rarely nowadays, now that we have that information, do I ever see a cat that I’m suspicious of a taurine problem? Because majority of people feed commercial cat food. But that is one, diet.
Chad: Well, you can look at a cat’s teeth and tell they’re not vegetarians.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, no, they’re not.
Chad: It’s like, come on.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, exactly. No, I don’t know what would motivate someone to try to do that. But anyways, yeah. The nutrition is so interesting because we have people who have made very healthy diets in a very convenient way for us.
Chad: Right. Exactly. What about as our cats and dogs as they age? We already talked a little bit about like, hey, this retina can deteriorate or degenerate. What are some other common things that happen as our dogs age? That we should keep an eye out for?
Dr. Visser: Well, a normal thing that pretty much everybody knows is, is that their dog’s eyes get cloudy. A lot of people will call that a cataract. It’s not technically a cataract. So it’s something that’s called nuclear sclerosis. It happens within the lens. The lens lives in the center of the eye, helps to focus light. And the lens, like a tree, is always making new fibers as we age. But unlike a tree, it can’t get any bigger. And so it just gets denser. So that haziness that you see in older dogs, in the center of their eye, that like blue-gray kind of color, that is called nuclear sclerosis. And it is very normal. And I have people all the time come in, they’re freaking out. Concerns that their dog is getting cataract. It is, definitely can mess with up close vision. So sometimes I hear like, he can’t catch the tree, like he doesn’t know where the tree is exactly, he can tell it’s there, but like up close he’s having a little bit more trouble. They could use cheaters for sure, if they would wear them. That would be great. But in general, that condition, this nuclear sclerosis is a normal age change that doesn’t cause a blinding problem long-term. I tell people all the time, like, you’re just lucky enough to have now a geriatric pet. Right. This is the joy of your animal living long enough to see this. So that’s something that is a normal age change. Other than that, like what would be not normal for an age would be true vision loss. You know, I think that some people think that, oh, my dog’s just old. Like they can’t, it’s normal for them to be blind. It’s not normal for them to be blind. They may not see, they’re not going to see as well as they did when they were two, but they shouldn’t really be bumping into things or unable to find things in general. It might take them a minute longer to find the tree, but they should still be able to find it. If your dog is blind, blind, that’s not a normal thing. So that might be due to cataract formation. It might be due to a retinal problem. There’s a variety of different things that can cause that, but that’s not a normal age change.
Chad: Yeah, yeah. Anything that we can do to try and prevent the nuclear, what’s it called again?
Dr. Visser: Nuclear sclerosis?
Chad: Yeah, that, exactly. There’s nothing you can do.
Dr. Visser: It’s just gonna happen. Yeah, it’s gonna happen. So it’s like the reason that we get cheaters when we’re forty.
Chad: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Visser: So, yeah, so we get it too. We’re just wildly intolerant as people. And so we get cataract surgery. So it’s funny, those cataracts are, human cataracts are a little bit different than dog cataracts. So when we go in to remove a dog cataract, we’re talking about a true white opacity within the lens. And it’s like a boulder compared to the nuclear sclerosis that the human surgeons are dealing with. Theirs are so much softer, it’s like very envious. In some throwable countries, they’ll see humans with true cataracts, but in general, where we are, they don’t. So yeah, so dog and human cataracts are different, and that normal hazy blue stuff is perfectly fine.
Chad: Gotcha, so don’t be alarmed, people, as long as they can still find the tree.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, if they’re anywhere around your home and you’ve got a twelve-year-old dog, that’s great, so.
Chad: You’ve seen those videos of the dogs that there’s like a glass screen door and they think they’re going outside and boom, you know? I know, I kind of feel bad for them.
Dr. Visser: Because I would do that too. It’s a really clean glass door.
Chad: It’s like, you’ve got to put something there to show them there’s something there, you know?
Dr. Visser: Yeah, for sure. You do, like a little sticker or something like that. Yeah, no. I know, but they are kind of funny. I think they’re only funny because the dogs don’t feel bad for themselves, right? The dogs are just like, huh? They just keep going, yeah.
Chad: Now, real quick for one of the things that I would say is more common. It’s not uncommon, but it’s not super common. Cherry eye.
Dr. Visser: Cherry eye. Yeah. We talked about what a third eyelid was, and we talked about a third eyelid gland, that tear gland. Cherry eye is when you can see that gland and you’re not supposed to be able to. Yeah. A really super common condition in young dogs, particularly Frenchies, Cavies, Cocker spaniels.
Chad: I know boxers tend to-
Dr. Visser: Yeah, boxers can for sure.
Chad: It’s not as common as these other ones.
Dr. Visser: Not as common as the other ones. I do a lot of Frenchies. Oh, and then some of the Mastiff type breeds, the Great Danes, the-
Chad: Corsos.
Dr. Visser: Yeah. The hardest ones to correct are the King Corsos. They’re really challenging for us for some reason.
Chad: Really? Is it because of the way they have so much muscle?
Dr. Visser: They just have massive glands. These tear glands are just like three times the size they need to be. But they’re huge. And so when I do surgery on them, I’m usually having to do multiple techniques to try to get them to stay in there. Really? Yeah. So the gland has, in a cherry eye, has prolapsed, meaning that you can see it when you’re not supposed to be able to. Can lead to chronic irritation. Can lead to dry eye because sometimes that gland, when it’s not supposed to be exposed to all the things, all the external things, can just kind of stop producing tears. Usually, that’s a long-term problem. This is not an emergency that you should rush your dog to the vet for, but in general, it should be addressed within a few weeks to a few months.
Chad: The recommendation is to get that surgically just, is it removed?
Dr. Visser: No. That is not recommended. Because if you remove it, you’d have dry eye. So you wouldn’t have that tear gland, which would be bad.
Chad: So what do you do here?
Dr. Visser: We replace it. So we surgically put it back in its place. There’s a bunch of different methods of doing it. I think every surgeon does what works best for them. Whenever there’s a bunch of different ways to do something, you always know that nothing’s one hundred percent perfect, right? Because we would all do whatever is one hundred percent perfect. So generally we quote people like an eighty to ninety percent success rate of that gland staying in place. So sometimes, unfortunately, ten to twenty percent we have to redo them. But thankfully the complication rate, as far as like anything happening to the eye itself or vision, is incredibly low. So they’re kind of a pain in the butt to deal with, I tell people, but they are not uncomfortable. It typically does not have a blinding complication. So it should be replaced in somewhat of a timely fashion, but nothing to be freaked out about or alarmed about or worried about your dog’s comfort or vision. So yeah, they occur because there’s supposed to be a little ligament that holds the gland in place. And we think that in some breeds that ligament is just loose. So kind of like you think about some people that are really predisposed to sprain an ankle because their ligaments just aren’t very tight and they roll them. Same idea. That ligament is not very tight and it rolls out of place basically. So I’m supposed to go down there and put it back in its spot.
Chad: See, I always thought that y’all just would cut it off or something, but now I understand like, you know, you can’t do that. Put it back into where it goes.
Dr. Visser: It’s actually, they used to do a lot a long time ago, twenty, thirty years ago, people did remove them and then a whole bunch of dogs got dry eye.
Chad: That’s more problems later.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, definitely, more problems down the road. So it’d be better to leave it than to cut it out, to leave it exposed than to cut it out. Still not the optimal plan, but cutting it out is considered malpractice now, so in general, so.
Chad: Well, I’ve seen some pretty bad cases where it’s like really big. I’m like, that’s gotta be annoying to that dog.
Dr. Visser: It must be, right? They can even be big to the point where like, the dog can kind of not see really great in that place.
Chad: That’s what I’m saying, it’s like big. It’s blocking a whole part of their vision.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, for sure. And it’s not really the cutest look either, right? So yeah, I mean, that’s not their major concern, but yeah, absolutely. No, they can be large. And those are the ones that I don’t like to do. But I do them, we do them well. Yeah, I’m stuffing it down in there.
Chad: Just teasing. Well, I feel like I could talk to you about eyes for hours, but as we’re wrapping up here, cause you’re just a wealth of knowledge, as we’re wrapping up, I gotta ask about chickens.
Dr. Visser: Chickens?
Chad: Can you tell me about chicken eyes?
Dr. Visser: Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I know anything about chicken eyes. I don’t think I do, I’ve never examined a chicken.
Chad: You don’t know anything about chicken eyes? Peacocks, any of these?
Dr. Visser: Do you have chickens?
Chad: I got chickens, guineas, peacocks.
Dr. Visser: It is the largest growing hobby pet, isn’t it?
Chad: It is, it is. But I had them before the-
Dr. Visser: Oh, you were the OG chicken guy?
Chad: Yeah, I’ve had them for years.
Dr. Visser: And your dogs don’t go crazy?
Chad: Well, you gotta train the dogs not to eat the chickens. You gotta train the cats not to eat the baby chicks. Okay. That is a process.
Dr. Visser: Okay, cool. Well, this is hugely important because I want another dog and I would like to have chickens, but I have a bird dog. So it is possible to own a bird dog and have chickens?
Chad: Oh, definitely. You just let me know, I’ll help you out. You know that?
Dr. Visser: That’s awesome. I’m genuinely gonna take you up on that. I’m very excited. Let’s do it. Because I would also like to get on the chicken train.
Chad: Well, if you need chickens, I can be your dealer. I can be your chicken dealer and I can help your dog learn not to chase your chickens.
Dr. Visser: Okay, well, we might have to do a follow-up podcast episode because I’m gonna come out and do some exams on chickens and therefore I will learn about them through YouTube. Because I don’t think I’ve ever examined one or learned about them.
Chad: The thing about chickens just from my observation is they’re super visual. You know how they see, you might not know, but like they see like little fleas or ticks in these tiny bugs. They see it.
Dr. Visser: And they’re pretty accurate when they like peck, right?
Chad: For sure, yeah, which is wild.
Dr. Visser: That is wild.
Chad: And I’ve had some situations where it’s a respiratory disease that a chicken can get.
Dr. Visser: Yes, that can affect their eye.
Chad: It creates like a big puss pocket in their eye. And so I found this veterinarian on YouTube from like India or something. And he’s like, do this, right? So I’m like, all right. So I got the puss pocket. You have to like basically get the puss out of the eye.
Dr. Visser: Oh gosh. Are their eyes okay after this?
Chad: I’m just like, I get some- Oh yeah. Because the eye is in there and the puss like is over the eye.
Dr. Visser: Really? Oh my gosh.
Chad: So I had to get like some jewelry tweezers and stuff and operate on this chicken and pull it out.
Dr. Visser: Okay. Next time will you call me so I can be part of this? Because I want to learn, I want to see.
Chad: Next time I’ll bring the chicken to you and I’ll be like, let’s check it out.
Dr. Visser: Yeah. And your chicken just sits still for this?
Chad: Well, you got to kind of like hold them down and then after. It’s one of those things, you got the chicken head in this hand and this hand, you got the tweezers and I’m freaking out because I don’t want to like poke the eye out or something.
Dr. Visser: Wrestle the chicken. Sounds like you’re doing a good job though. What’s your success rate over here, Chad?
Chad: I figured it out. one hundred percent? Yeah, one hundred percent success rate.
Dr. Visser: Okay. Well, you can teach me something about eyeballs and chickens. I’m pumped. I want to learn.
Chad: But yeah, I don’t know if you’d ever dealt with them.
Dr. Visser: Never.
Chad: But the way their vision operates, at least from my observation, is pretty insane, how they can track things and find little things.
Dr. Visser: Well, I figured they were pretty visually acute because they put those blinders on them. Sometimes they’re being aggressive to other chickens. Put the thing over their head. But truthfully, I don’t know much about it. So I’ll do some research and I’ll come look at your chickens.
Chad: One last question. Animals with the slit eyes versus the round eyes.
Dr. Visser: Oh yeah, the pupil. Isn’t that fascinating?
Chad: Yeah, what is that? Can you tell us about it? Like snakes have it, right? Some snakes?
Dr. Visser: They do. Many reptiles and cats have a slit-shaped pupil. So it’s just a difference in anatomy. A pupil is basically an empty space. A lot of people think it’s like a structure, but it’s actually just the space between the iris, which is the color part of the eye. And there are just differences in kind of the shape of them because of the way that the iris is made. So it’s just very specie specific.
Chad: So it doesn’t really matter? It doesn’t affect the vision differently? Yeah.
Dr. Visser: I don’t remember. I will come back with an answer, but it is unique, yes. I don’t remember that.
Chad: I didn’t give that to you to look into.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, really, Chad, come on. I’ve seen, I don’t know if it’s true, but venomous snakes, they say have the slits. Non-venomous snakes don’t, but I’ve also seen pictures of venomous snakes where it seems like they’re slit.
Chad: Same round. Rounds out. So I don’t know if it’s like the light change or whatever.
Dr. Visser: I should remember this. I should remember this. I think it depends on the category of the snake, like there’s vipers, and then there’s like rattles and things like that. So I think that it depends on the lineage of the species.
Chad: We’ll call your snake guy, see what you think.
Dr. Visser: I know, I will call Dr. Milachamp and ask him, because then he will, in a British accent, probably curse at me and be like, you should know this. He probably will hit me over the head with a two by four.
Chad: Has he ever been bit by one of his snakes before?
Dr. Visser: Yeah.
Chad: Like a venomous one? Yeah. Oh, really? Then you got to go to the ER, you got to get the anti-venom. He might have anti-venom himself.
Dr. Visser: Texas man. Few rules. Florida too. Florida has few rules. Practicing in Texas and Florida, it was kind of cowboy. It’s kind of wild.
Chad: Well, the thing about West Palm Beach is, that’s where the guy on the bath salts was trying to eat people. That was West Palm Beach, right? Was that when you were there or that wasn’t when you were there?
Dr. Visser: It was when I was there. I think it was. Yeah, that was terrifying.
Chad: I was in West Palm Beach for like three months for Navy training at the Coast Guard base down there many, many years ago. So I was just like very little familiar with it, but I do remember it being super beautiful. It is. Then you got the bath salt people there.
Dr. Visser: Right, right. Those are not. You have Palm Beach people. You have Trump on Palm Beach. It’s very varied like ophthalmology. Lots of variety.
Chad: But a good place I like Florida.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, I do too.
Chad: Anyway, Hannah, thank you very much for your time. Can you tell us or tell the audience how they can get in touch with you if they are looking to see an eye specialist or talk to you more about what they have going on?
Dr. Visser: So I own and operate Charleston Animal Eye Specialist. We are in the West Ashley area of Charleston, South Carolina. Our website is www.charlestonanimaleye.com, eye singular, and like EYE. And then our phone number is eight four three seven nine zero nine zero eight eight. So they can get a hold of me any of those ways. We have an Instagram page too. Oh, perfect. Yeah, at Charleston Animal Eye.
Chad: Awesome, awesome. So check out her Instagram. Make sure you look at the eyes on there.
Dr. Visser: We do. We post some funny pictures and things of, you know, animals that come in, like when we had a mini sheep in here. And we did some possum babies yesterday. So I got to post pictures of that.
Chad: Oh, really? I love possums.
Dr. Visser: You love possums? They’re cool. They’re very cool.
Chad: I love possums.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, I hadn’t actually ever gotten to see a possum eye yesterday.
Chad: So what was the situation with that? They were like keepers of the wild people?
Dr. Visser: Um, it’s actually one of my nurses does some rehabs, some wildlife rehab. So she has some possum babies and one of them had little ulcers on both eyes. So yeah, so we got to take a look and um, yeah, and they, it was, it was really, so what’d you end up doing? You just like assessed treating with antibiotics. Yeah, I just did a little exam and we’re going to see how he heals up in the next few weeks. She found, she just found the baby somewhere or someone else found the babies and gave them to her. She’s, yeah, she’s amazing. I have given her like all kinds of things out of squirrels and blue jays and stuff. But very people are, are different people. Yeah. They’re very accepting and gracious and we try with anything, I feel like. But she’s actually very skilled at wildlife rehab and I’m lucky to have her, Sarah. She’s awesome. So yeah, but she loves possums. And so half time she’s got little possum babies at work that she just goes back there and feeds in between things. Yeah, that’s cool. I know. Possums are cool.
Chad: They’re super unique.
Dr. Visser: They are. Yeah. And people are always scared, but they’re not like rabies vectors and they’re actually pretty easy to handle.
Chad: And they’re like immune to snake venom.
Dr. Visser: Yeah.
Chad: And they help eat things.
Dr. Visser: Raccoons scare me a lot more than possums.
Chad: Don’t mess with a raccoon.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, raccoons are wily, but they’re fascinating because they have those little hands and they can do all kinds of things.
Chad: They’re like cats, but more aggressive.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, destructive. And those can carry rabies, so we tend to try to avoid those guys. But yeah, no, we see all kinds of fun stuff.
Chad: Yeah. The blue jay, you assessed their eyes? Yeah.
Dr. Visser: Well, he fell out of the nest, so I just gave him to… Apparently, blue jays are really obnoxious. And so she still has him. He comes to her house and like, yeah, she tried… She rehabbed him and he was able to go, but he just keeps coming back.
Chad: He’s like, give me food.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, he does. Exactly. I found him near the brewery Edmond’s Oats, so we call him Edmond. And yeah, he just screams at her all day long for food. And yeah, he’s kind of a little jerk. So she lives out in this lovely area and she has all these little animals and it sounds like Snow White.
Chad: Yeah, yeah. Well, I have a kind of sad story, but we had a baby bird fall out of a nest. It was like a Carolina Wren, so very small. I fed it, rehabilitated it, going to release it. Well, I gave it to one of my daughters because I had tore my ACL, so I’m stuck on the couch. I’m like, all right, take this, because our cats are indoor-outdoor, right?
Dr. Visser: Okay.
Chad: And we train them to not eat baby chicks, but that doesn’t translate the song, Bergs, right? So I was like, take this bird away from the house, away from where the cats go, let it go. What she do, she was like right outside, the bird got away from her, the cat grabbed it.
Dr. Visser: Oh, no.
Chad: I’m like, holy cow, dude.
Dr. Visser: It’s a good example to teach your daughter about circle of life.
Chad: Exactly. Right?
Dr. Visser: Circle of life. So we can’t always save everything.
Chad: Exactly.
Dr. Visser: You gave them a shot. Yeah.
Chad: But anyway, thank you, Hannah, so much for your time.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, thank you so much.
Chad: If you guys are looking for an eye specialist, she is your person if you’re in Charleston, South Carolina or surrounding area.
Dr. Visser: Yeah, absolutely. We see people from all over.
Chad: She sees horses. Yes, I do. She sees anything.
Dr. Visser: I see anything but a person.
Chad: Anything but a person.
Dr. Visser: No people.
Chad: As long as it’s got an eyeball.
Dr. Visser: Yeah. Thanks so much, Chad.
Chad: Thank you and we’ll talk to you soon.
Dr. Visser: Thanks.
Chad: All right. Talk to you guys later.
