I hate eye drops. Who doesn't? Babies have to be held down for eye drops. Toddlers have to be bribed. Adults have to be rationalized with. Dogs have to be held down, bribed, wrestled, tricked, and yes, even pleaded with while maybe, just maybe, a drop will by chance hit the corner of the eye and go in. The Miracle on Doggie Drops. GOALLLLLLLL!
It's simple; no matter how you look at it eye drops are a treacherous act in which you tell the human, er, dog, human, dog-human, that this isn't going to hurt one little bit, lies. When I was on eye pressure drops 3x a day they burned, they stung, they were little droplets of sacrilegious torture devices, but they were necessary. This is what we try to explain to Stella. She yawns.
Our discharge sheet flaunts its pompous instructions, "Administer 4 drop into each eye 4x daily, wait at least five minutes and administer gel," Its bold faced Arial font gloats hanging there on the fridge. Have they ever tried to hit a needle as it's thrashing around?
I also have to say, if your dog is an angelic cherub allowing you to casually administer upwards of 16 wet torture bombs a day, while only looking up and you with lovingly big doe eyes, there's no chance we'd ever be friends, why are you even reading this? Your recovery will be a breeze! Maybe you will actually get work done while you're home with your dog for the next two weeks. Not me.
So after a full, stressful day of being alone to administer drops with my little patient, I was glad to get out of the house and let my spouse deal with it, relieved to get away from the previous day's battle. I'll say here that the "drop misses" are even worse than the "hits." Once you've given up your discreetness, you don't stand a chance.
This resistance provided the most challenges early on. So here was our problems, advice and solutions (it only took us about a day to figure it out, and nearly a thousand attempts):
The cone makes it hard (IMPOSSIBLE) to grab your dog because you can't grip her head.
If you try gripping her collar, she's spinning her head away from you. Not ideal.
Forums and Labrador Message Board enthusiasts advise you to get the dog to sit in your lap or you straddle the dog as you sit above it in a chair.
Sorry but 80lbs of force and terror cannot be controlled by my lower body while my upper body is busy trying to hit eyes with drops.
The Ophthalmology Tech when asked, said that theoretically we could take the cone off temporarily as long as we could guarantee she wouldn't get away from us and scratch her eyes (THIS IS A BIG NO-NO!)
If I can't get her to sit still long enough to get a drop in, once she experiences freedom, she'd take full advantage and off to the ER we'd inevitably go.
Our only successful method was this: My husband hugs her against his body and holds her face against him, right by her nose. (A forced hug by a gross relative while the kid is resisting, if you will.)
We sit on the bed on either side of her and HIDE (dogs aren't idiots, she saw that bottle move from the counter and away she went) the bottle of drops behind my body, upside down (drops come out faster, less time wasted, the better) in one hand, and pry her eyes open with the other.
The gel is trickier.We used to be able to put it on our finger tip and smudge it around but since she has developed an aversion to us going near her, and with all the incisions around her eye, it's not successful. So, we warm the container of eye gel in our hands, again holding it upside down and aiming for the center of her eye.
If this takes you more than a few seconds (literally 2), you're taking too long.
By the end, we hit the mark every single time. Maybe Stella got better, maybe we did.
It's simple; no matter how you look at it eye drops are a treacherous act in which you tell the human, er, dog, human, dog-human, that this isn't going to hurt one little bit, lies. When I was on eye pressure drops 3x a day they burned, they stung, they were little droplets of sacrilegious torture devices, but they were necessary. This is what we try to explain to Stella. She yawns.
Our discharge sheet flaunts its pompous instructions, "Administer 4 drop into each eye 4x daily, wait at least five minutes and administer gel," Its bold faced Arial font gloats hanging there on the fridge. Have they ever tried to hit a needle as it's thrashing around?
I also have to say, if your dog is an angelic cherub allowing you to casually administer upwards of 16 wet torture bombs a day, while only looking up and you with lovingly big doe eyes, there's no chance we'd ever be friends, why are you even reading this? Your recovery will be a breeze! Maybe you will actually get work done while you're home with your dog for the next two weeks. Not me.
So after a full, stressful day of being alone to administer drops with my little patient, I was glad to get out of the house and let my spouse deal with it, relieved to get away from the previous day's battle. I'll say here that the "drop misses" are even worse than the "hits." Once you've given up your discreetness, you don't stand a chance.
This resistance provided the most challenges early on. So here was our problems, advice and solutions (it only took us about a day to figure it out, and nearly a thousand attempts):
The cone makes it hard (IMPOSSIBLE) to grab your dog because you can't grip her head.
If you try gripping her collar, she's spinning her head away from you. Not ideal.
Forums and Labrador Message Board enthusiasts advise you to get the dog to sit in your lap or you straddle the dog as you sit above it in a chair.
Sorry but 80lbs of force and terror cannot be controlled by my lower body while my upper body is busy trying to hit eyes with drops.
The Ophthalmology Tech when asked, said that theoretically we could take the cone off temporarily as long as we could guarantee she wouldn't get away from us and scratch her eyes (THIS IS A BIG NO-NO!)
If I can't get her to sit still long enough to get a drop in, once she experiences freedom, she'd take full advantage and off to the ER we'd inevitably go.
Our only successful method was this: My husband hugs her against his body and holds her face against him, right by her nose. (A forced hug by a gross relative while the kid is resisting, if you will.)
We sit on the bed on either side of her and HIDE (dogs aren't idiots, she saw that bottle move from the counter and away she went) the bottle of drops behind my body, upside down (drops come out faster, less time wasted, the better) in one hand, and pry her eyes open with the other.
The gel is trickier.We used to be able to put it on our finger tip and smudge it around but since she has developed an aversion to us going near her, and with all the incisions around her eye, it's not successful. So, we warm the container of eye gel in our hands, again holding it upside down and aiming for the center of her eye.
If this takes you more than a few seconds (literally 2), you're taking too long.
By the end, we hit the mark every single time. Maybe Stella got better, maybe we did.
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