Bright Eyes

STEVE: What you’re looking for in healthy eyes in a horse are, that they have, they are normally open, they are clear, that they are, there’s no discharge, that they’re not blinking. That both eyes are equally have the same symmetrical size and color and shape.

What we will see from time to time is, when a horse has some discharge out of the corner of their eye that runs down over the face. This can be indicative both, of an allergy, some sort of irritant, something in the way of a blockage of the nasolacrimal duct, from the nose, and what can happen here is, this can be chronic problem due to an infection, due to a particular matter that will block this duct, and what the veterinarian will do is they’ll come in a flush that duct and basically create patency, so it doesn’t rain over their face anymore, and its quite readily solved problem.

Other things that can become obvious is if the eye become cloudy, its indicative that potentially that there’s been an injury to the cornea, the surface of the eye, that the horse has possibly an infection, well if they do have an injury to the surface of the cornea, they can get a secondary infection quite easily.

And this is something that needs to be looked at right away, its not something that you wait on, give it a few days, it needs be, have a professional look at it as soon as possible because corneal melt-down or complete breakdown of the surface of the eye can lead to what they call evisceration of the eye, and you can basically lose the horses eye. Its not something you’re gonna mess around with and you should have it attended to right away.

ALEX: Its also important in your daily check to go, to look at your horses eye on a daily basis, and the environment they live in, to be, make sure that its safe. There’s no nails sticking out or any places that a horse can catch their eye, you know, on something sharp that causes an injury. But as, I think it’s very very important that if you see something wrong with a horses eyes, is call your veterinarian right away. It’s not something you want to wait on, or mess around with.