Stains aren't all bad

I am not the biggest fan of eye appointments. I have had a few where I entered the room, took one look at the animal’s face, turned around and called the specialist. Don’t worry, I have never and will never be taking the time to take pictures of those cases.

One kind of eye appointment that I tend to enjoy is corneal ulcers. The majority of ones caused by trauma (hanging their heads out of a vehicle, playing with unhappy cats, sticking their faces into areas they have no place doing so) respond fairly easily to treatment. Before deciding on what kind of medication, I almost always do an eye stain. Under a black light, an ulcer will show up as an apple green color. One very important thing when it comes to ulcers, never use a medication containing a steroid. A perforating corneal ulcer is not a pretty thing.

One thing I do insist upon is a recheck eye stain appointment in 7 to 10 days. If it has not cleared up, we either need a change in medication or a referral to the specialist.

This picture is a dog that is under anesthetic for another procedure and also happened to have a sore eye. The stain was rather obvious.

Leave it alone!!!

There are a couple of cardinal rules when dealing with the wildlife babies. Number one: leave them alone! Number two: mothers will accept their young even if they have been touched by dogs or humans, so if they have been moved, put them back! Number three: if you find an injured baby, take it to your veterinarian for assessment.

Here are some fun facts about our wild rabbits:
- rabbits make their nests in the darndest places such as brush piles, your front yard or long grass.
- rabbit mothers (does) spend very little time with their young. Generally, they check on their young twice daily.
- babies only need to nurse for 5 minutes per day as the milk is very rich.

If you find a nest and are suspicious that the mother has been killed and the babies abandoned, please contact your local veterinarian or wildlife center for help. There are a few tricks to see determine if the mother has returned or not to the nest.

You can see the picture of inspiration for this blog. This is a unique situation in that the owner’s cat had brought this baby home. Since there was no way they could find the nest, the baby was brought into us. It seemed to be otherwise healthy so we sent it to the rehabilitation centre. We will be keeping our fingers crossed for this little one. The mortality rate of orphaned babies can be as high as 90%.