Tear Staining in Dogs: 5 Natural Answers

This is Dr. Andrew Jones. In this edition of NrSecrets, I'm going to show you what to do for eye staining in dogs. Hi guys, welcome back again. This is Menina. She's my in-law's neighbour's dog. Yes, I've gone to now Borrowing Dogs for videos. She's a lovely Portuguese water dog. She's being very accommodating. As the video goes on and it gets hotter, she's actually being really good about this. So in today's video, I'm discussing a condition called eye staining. She, fortunately, is a black dog, so we're not going to see it, but I'm going to describe it in detail and give you a sense of what causes it, especially what you can be doing at home if it's your dog that has this problem. So eye staining in particular is where we get, especially these small breed dogs, primarily they're dogs with white fur, will have excessive eye tear production for a variety of different reasons. And that can go ahead, instead of it draining through these openings or these ducts in their lower eyelids and draining into their nose, it'll actually stay on the surface of their skin, draining into the corner of their eyes, matting their fur, producing really a dark, dark, almost like this for black fur, a black stain in the corner of their eye. So with excessive eye staining, there's a couple of things you need to be thinking about. First, in terms of understanding why it's happening, the majority of dogs, they normally produce a thing called porphyrins. That's a pigment that is found in tears and can be found in saliva, and that's just from an end product from the breakdown of red blood cells. So it's a normal thing that happens in our dog's body. Unfortunately, some dogs produce more porphyrins than others, so they have much more pronounced tear staining. So the first big thing, if you've got a dog that has this excessive eye staining for too many tears, is first look at treating or addressing the underlying cause, like what's causing this in the first place. So the first big point, suggestion, is going to see your veterinarian, having them have a good examination of your dog, put in some type of fluorescein, a stain in your dog's eye to determine if the tear ducts are blocked or not, and potentially then unobstructing those tear ducts, which they can do as a veterinary procedure. The next thing, they look at things that increase tear production. They can check to see if your dog has any ingrown hairs in their eyelids that are irritating the surface of the eye. Do they have an underlying eye infection? Do they have something else more serious, as far as eye-wise, that's going to produce far more tears? So that's the first big thing, getting a proper veterinary exam, seeing if you can determine the underlying cause, then treating that. My next suggestion is a little bit of the obvious, but perhaps it's just how you do it. Obviously, it's keeping your dog, the corner of your dog's eye, and wiping those tears away regularly. So that stain that happens right here, in the corner, you can see, oh, look at your eyes. Hors d'oeuvres, she has no real eye staining, so there's nothing really to wipe. But a couple of suggestions. One, I want you to use a warm cloth, so warm water and damp water. Have it sit there and soak first. Let it cool down. It's about five minutes. You want to do that at least once a day. Oh, girl, didn't that come in your nose? And as it warms up, it'll actually help soften up any of the debris, any of the hair that's matted. And then you can wipe a bit of that hair, along with all the pigment that's sort of built up and crusted up. You often get these secondary eye infections. So a couple of things, topically, you can use if there actually is an eye, a surface skin infection in the corner of her eye, right below the base of her eyes. One, you could use something like aloe, an aloe calendula. So you can just get that in combination as a cream. It's a great anti-inflammatory. It has some antibacterial properties. So you're just going to put that right in the corner of the eye, where all those tears are building up. Or you could use something like I've got here. So this is this polysporin for eyes. It's a topical antibacterial ointment. The third thing I want to suggest is the use of good bacteria. They're called probiotics. So those are the bacteria that are found in things such as yogurt, which I was just having a sample of earlier. We're looking at, you can get probiotics in a variety of different sources. You can just buy the commercial probiotics at a natural health store. You can also just look at giving your dog yogurt. I'm once again looking at about two tablespoons per 10 pounds of body weight. The big point is you need to be giving enough. We're looking at about 100 million CFUs per 10 pounds of body weight daily. The last couple of things are a couple of different herbs that have been shown to be helpful by some of the alternative veterinarians for excessive eye staining. So one is dandelion. So in particular, you're looking at, I've gone and picked a dandelion. This is the dandelion root. So you're looking at the dandelion root tincture. And what it does, we know that it's beneficial for any types of liver disease. So there's the thought that in some cases of excessive eye tearing, what happens is you actually get the porphyrins. This is the pigment from the red cells. Too much of that goes into the tears that are causing the staining in the first place because the liver isn't functioning normally. So if we can help the liver function better, we can decrease tear staining. So we're looking at a dandelion tincture dose of about one drop for every 2 pounds of body weight, given once or twice daily. The other thing is, the second thing is called, herb is called milk thistle. And it in particular too has been used by a number of different alternative veterinarians for any type of underlying liver disease. So once again, we're trying to improve liver function, potentially help deal with less porphyrins that make its way into the tears. The milk thistle dose is 100 milligrams per 10 pounds of body weight, given once or twice daily. Okay, the one last thing I wanted to add around treating eye staining is there is a number of different products that are on the market, which unfortunately shouldn't be. There actually came an antibiotic called Tylosin. So they work actually by treating bacteria, which are found in the tears, which are then increasing tear staining. But they work because they're an antibiotic. And doing so by giving that, just for tear excessive eye staining, what you're actually doing is altering your dog's gut flora, making it resistant to other antibiotics, potentially making them prone to serious secondary infection. So if you're using any of those products, I would first suggest you don't use them. Secondly, really look at some of the alternative options. Thanks for watching this edition on eye staining in dogs. What I want you to do now is first click that link in the box above. That can subscribe to my channel. And you can go ahead and click that link in the box below. I can send you my free books and videos. You can go to klagerdogs.com. My top natural remedies. Leaves themselves. And cut.