Conjunctivitis

My foster dog has conjunctivitis or some kind of eye infection. Her eye is red and weeping yellow stuff a little bit. This just started today so I'll be taking her to the vets on Monday.

I was wondering what's best to soothe her eye? I'm thinking just warm water on a cotton wool pad.

Why do they always get sick on a weekend

Sorry to hear your wee foster has a bad eye. Poor soul. I would think that bathing her eye with boiled and cooled (no salt incase of irritation) would be ok to gently wipe over as it would remove the gunk that's coming from the eye to stop it perhaps buidling up around the eye.

Typical these things happen on a weekend, eh. Hope her eye is better soon.

Yep - I would go with plain boiled and then cooled water.

Hope you get it sorted..... x

Agree with the above, just remember to isolate the eye by not wiping the other eye with the same pad....

I agree with the above and I would say just wipe the eye from the inner to the outer once and throw away that cotton wool ball . Then repeat with a clean one , do that a few times but always using one wipe per cotton wool ball

Thanks for the advice guys. I've been washing my hands about a million times - don't want to catch it off her myself either

It doesn't look too bad today, nowhere near as much gunk but still looking very red. I'll ring the vet first thing tomorrow morning.

Will let you know how we get on.

P.S. She's still her usual playful self so it mustn't be bothering her too much

Salt is actually good as long as it is not too much (to tear level saltiness) - in his health book vet Dr Pitcairn recommends dissolving a quarter teaspoon of sea salt into a cup of filtered (or distilled) water and clean the eye several times a day with it - either by dropping some drops from an eye dropper or dripping into the eye from a soaked cotton ball.

I've used this advice several times for rescues and it's always cleared it up - never needed to go to the vet.

If the salt doesn't work, he has other suggestions which I can list here if you are interested in natural alternatives.

Thanks Ziva, yes I am interested in natural alternatives. I think vets are sometimes too quick to dish out antibiotics. I thought I'd read somewhere about using salt. I'll try it this evening.

I will be taking her to the vets though because she's foster dog so legally doesn't belong to me.

My westie had this not so long ago, I washed her eye with warm water as has been said, and the vets have me some eye drops which worked really quickly! Good luck! xxx

I would be very careful with the salt or you might end up doing more harm than good
Also I would not be putting anything which is not sterile into the eyes .