Eye Trouble

A few weeks ago one of our horses, Charley, got poked in the eye somehow. We noticed it after a big wind storm. His eye was runny and squinting and he had a white cloudiness on his cornea. Eye problems are pretty serious so we had the vet come out right away. The vet put in a device called a levage that allows you to put medicine in the horse's eye without having to sedate him every time. It is basically a tube that is inserted through the horse's eyelid and is then run up along his forehead and sutured in place and then run up to his mane and tied and taped there. Then you can inject the medication into the tube without having to get anywhere near the horse's eye. Since the medication had to be administered every 3 to 4 hours it was a pretty big deal. Unfortunately, the eye didn't seem to be getting better after a couple of weeks so we transported Charley all the way up to Phoenix to the Arizona Equine Clinic. They checked him out and determined that the levage had slipped down underneath the eyelid and was rubbing on the cornea. Since then the eye has improved quite a bit and we expect a full recovery. The levage is only supposed to be in for a couple weeks and we are now going on four. However, the vets say that we can keep the device in until it starts to irritate the eyelid. Hopefully, we can keep it in another week or so until the eye is completely healed. The moral of the story is, put a fly mask on your horse on windy days.