What to Do when your Older Dog Loses its Sight

Video Transcript

"Another area that can become an complication with your dog as they age is their loss of vision. You might see as they start to hit 8, 9, 10 years old in a larger breed and in a smaller breed it could came late as 13 years old. Good girl. What you might start to see is clouding in the eyes. At first, you might see just a little bit of milkiness in eye. Depending on the dog and how quickly they start to lose their vision, it might actually become more and more opaque. Now Hannah's eyes are actually quite nice. There's just a teeny bit of clouding you can see in the center of the eye. As your dog starts to get cloudy and focus less well on what they're looking at, they can also become disoriented. You might find them banging into things or miss stepping. If a dog completely loses it's vision the it obviously won't be able to see at all. Certainly there are surgeries that you can do. Not many people are going to want to do that is later in its life, put it through that kind of surgery. The best thing to do for your dog if this arises is keep things fairly constant. Help the dog learn how to navigate around areas. Again, with the whole idea of approaches from people, we don't want to startle the dog. We want the dog to be comfortable. If they can't see you coming up but they still have fairly good hearing, then you might want to talk to them as you're making your approach. Use your voice to help guide the dog. Interestingly enough, dogs that have lost their vision that live with other dogs that have still got good vision, will often be aided by those dogs when they're walking around properties. You can often see sighted dogs helping guide older dogs that have lived in the house get around things, getting around obstacles."