Eye vet sees all kinds
Dr. Charlotte Keller prepares her instrument tray for her first procedure of the day, an injection of gentocin antibiotic into the eyes of a blind senior dog.
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As one of only two veterinary ophthalmologists in B.C., Marnie Ford thought she’d seen it all.
Dogs and cats with ulcerated eyes after getting into fights, sea lions and mackaws with cataracts, horses with conjunctivitis.
Then a wallaby hopped into her waiting room.
“It was weird. The owner just took it out of her car and it hopped right through the waiting room,” says Ford, who operates West Coast Veterinary Eye Specialists in Sapperton, with Charlotte Keller.
The wallaby turned out to be a model patient—no boxing gloves were needed to treat its minor eye irritation.
As the only clinic of its kind in the province, Ford and Keller treat patients of all sizes and species, from across Canada, Washington state and Alaska. Most of them are household pets like dogs, cats and birds, but they also treat horses, and rescued wildlife like raptors and sea lions.
While most humans might get skittish at the prospect of someone poking around their eyes, Ford says animals are remarkably tolerant.
“We’ve never really had any tremendous battles” in the four years the clinic has been open, says Ford. “You’d think they’d be scared, but handling them is never an issue.”
Rather, it’s the owners that are the challenge.
Since animals can’t really speak for themselves, the owners do it for them, often putting their own interpretation to the symptoms their animal may be exhibiting, says Ford.
“You have to be able to go beyond what the owner is telling you it’s this or it’s that. You have to start from the same starting point and work your way up so you don’t miss anything.
“It’s a lot like pediatric medicine in that you have a little creature that doesn’t speak and you have an owner who’s very worried.”
Many of the cases the clinic treats are the result of trauma, putting a cornea back together again after an accident or fight, as well as cataract surgeries. Diseases like glaucoma can also be an emergency for dogs that can be blinded within 24 hours if left untreated.
The challenges working with animals’ eyes are endless, says Ford, whose passion was piqued when she worked in a pathology lab where her boss had a particular interest in eyes.
“It’s the coolest organ in the whole body,” says Ford.
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