Old maltese dog eye injured - please help
Hello everyone, please excuse bad English it's not my first language,
our 12-year-old Maltese injured his eye approximately 8-9 days ago. Namely, the hair around his eyes was cut with small scissors for reasons of hygiene because the hairs were bothering him and his eye was watering. He moved suddenly and injured his eye absolutely by accident.
We don't know the depth of the injury, but days later the dog was behaving normally, happy, playing, not withdrawing to be alone, etc. Without any indication that he was hurt except at that "stab" moment because he screamed.
I feel absolutely abnormal guilt because I did it, of course by accident, out of the desire to keep him hygienic and make it easier for him and his eyes not to tear.
The situation continues like this, a day or two later he had a regular haircut and bath at the groomer and no significant abnormalities of the eye were noticed, but soon he began to discharge a whitish discharge from the eye and I bought special alcohol-free wet wipes for dogs with chamomile to calm him down. The dog allowed touching the eye and wiping.
The day after that (it means about 5-6 days after the injury), he starts to squint. The next day, we take him to the vet (note that we were not in our city and did not have a trusted vet until then), the vet said that the sclera injury is visible and the eye is red, but he did not perform further tests because the dog generally does not act as if he has any problems. We were given tobramycin drops to put 2 drops in both eyes (both the injured and the healthy eye), 3-4 times a day. The dog cooperates very well, allows instillation, wiping the eye, allows touching (because we check that the eye has not hardened or swollen), plays, eats normally.
The day after the consultation with the vet, we spent the day in the countryside, where the dog ran a lot and rolled around in the grass. After that, we see a hyphema (the AI says that the image shows fresher bleeding and that it could be that the injured blood vessel burst under "pressure" during the day in the countryside). The vet originally said to put tobramycin for 5 days and then come back for a check-up.
Today is the fifth day, and at the mention of hyphema the vet tells us that he really doesn't know if it is due to some process inside the eye or a fresh injury. To some extent, the improvement is that he manages to keep that eye fully open, then squints (mostly when exposed to strong light) and so on in a circle, and it looks like the redness is slowely dissappearing. They said to continue with tobramycin for the next 10 days, and to introduce artificial tear drops with gel between the antibiotics, and to keep him strictly still (we carry him up and down the stairs, he doesn't run around the yard...) and to monitor the situation if his eyes close, swell, become tight, he doesn't allow touch, to take him to the university veterinary clinic (we don't have access to modern clinics in our city, and the vet thinks the dog is behaving normally for now).
Please advise, I'm really panicking and feeling abnormally guilty. Our dog is healthy for his age and doesn't have any problems so far (not on any medication).
Posted Apr 7, 2026, 11:15 AM UTC