At around age 2, our male had already had his first cherry eye (more on this later). By age three, a bop in the face by a small kid led to his second case of cherry eye. So, by the ripe old age of four, our male had already had two eye surgeries. One of his eyes always had a little bit more red scarring after the surgery. And, well, some of his behavior led us to believe that he may have long-term problems with his vision.

See, he was one of the clutziest dogs ever. This dog could walk into walls. He almost walked off the edge of a cliff ridge. Hey, aren’t dogs supposed to have some connection to nature? Some ‘primal instinct’? He couldn’t possibly not sense he was on the edge of a large pit, could he? Hey, what was that thudding noise? He often couldn’t see a toy that was right in front of him on the ground, leading him to bark at us to throw it. (“Hey, buddy, I already threw it! It’s right in front of you! On the right! No, the other right!”)

We often wondered if he just wasn’t too smart.

But then we realized that everything clutzy he did was actually related to his sight. And then we noticed his eyes seemed to be getting cloudier. We had visions (no pun intended) of taking care of the clumsiest dog in the world and him being blind from cataracts to boot. Not so easy to lug around a 65 lb. bully in a Paris Hilton-style doggie purse.

We sought out a dog opthamologist. She finally pointed out that our dog wasn’t stupid, we were. He had a case of Keratoconjunctivitis sicca or – for us simple minded folk – dry eye. If we didn’t catch it and treat it, it could have led to permanent damage of his cornea, in which case we would be toting around our big guy in a Radio Flyer wagon in no time (like this guy):

She prescribed Optimmune, which is a pretty expensive but very effective eye ointment. A tiny squeeze in each eye, morning and night, and his eyes are no longer cloudy, he is a lot happier - and our walls don’t have skid marks from his face plants.

In all seriousness, we had lots of great vets during the course of our various moves – and none of them noticed this. Sometimes seeing a specialist is really the way to go, and I would say that for smush-faced, bug-eyed dogs, good opthamologists are key.