How to Clean a Dog's Eyes With Chamomile

Chamomile's healing properties have made it, since ancient times, a widely used natural remedy to treat various health problems. And not just in humans. In fact, it's common to recommend cleaning a dog's eyes with chamomile to treat certain eye conditions.

What Are Chamomile's Healing Properties?

Chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla) is an aromatic herb with many anti-inflammatory, anti-allergic, antibacterial, and calming properties, besides digestive ones. This is all due to some of its components or active ingredients, such as alpha-bisabolol or chamazulene, present in its essential oil.

In dogs, it can help treat some eye problems, since it helps reduce high eye pressure, preventing the development of glaucoma or vision loss. This increase in pressure can have multiple causes, such as blows, eye disturbances, or a medication's effect.

Chamomile, therefore, helps stabilize pressure. That's why cleaning a dog's eyes with chamomile when they're inflamed or irritated can be beneficial, but always with a lot of caution. What does this mean? Whether or not you decide to use this remedy, you should visit the vet so they can examine the dog.

Chamomile can be a good complement to another treatment, but it's important for a professional to be able to diagnose what's happening to our furry friend, to prevent an eye problem from getting worse. In addition, you should follow certain recommendations when applying chamomile to a dog's eye, so that, as the saying goes, "the cure isn't worse than the disease." What are these recommendations? Let's see.

How to Prepare a Chamomile Infusion

The best way to clean a dog's eyes with chamomile is by preparing a water infusion. For this, we need to follow these steps:

• Boil a quarter liter of water in a pot with half a tablespoon of dried chamomile flowers. You can get these at an herbalist's shop or online.
• Once it reaches boiling point, remove the pot from the heat and cover it so the water can steep.
• After several minutes, remove the lid and let the chamomile cool completely. Using a strainer, remove the flowers.
• Keep the infusion in the fridge for a few more minutes.

To boost chamomile's anti-inflammatory properties, it's important for the infusion to cool. That said, don't leave it too long, since if it ferments, bacteria can proliferate. If these were to get into the dog's eye, they could worsen its condition.

If there's any wound in the eye, internal or external, this remedy isn't recommended. This is because we could encourage an infection if the infusion ferments without us noticing.

In addition, keep in mind that chamomile water isn't a sterilized product, unlike saline solution or other products the vet may recommend. Because of this, you need to take extra precautions both when preparing the infusion and when applying it.

How to Clean a Dog's Eyes

Once the chamomile infusion is ready and has cooled, the following steps to apply this natural remedy are:

• Take a sterile gauze pad and dampen it with the infusion.
• Gently clean the dog's eyes with the chamomile, avoiding hurting it.
• You can also let a few drops fall onto the eye area; with the same damp gauze, gently massage the area.

If you want to use chamomile water several times a day to clean your dog's eyes, remember not to keep the same infusion. It needs to be a fresh one each time, so it doesn't ferment.

In conclusion: you can turn to chamomile as a complement to other eye treatments, or preventively to maintain good eye hygiene and prevent your dog from having eye problems.

Chamomile can help treat conjunctivitis in dogs, eliminate eye discharge, ease eye itching, and fight redness or inflammation. All this, thanks to this special herb's healing properties, but you need to know how to use it correctly.