Dog Eye Irritation & Discharge with Pinkness around Inside of Eyelid

by Oana
(NJ)

My 1 yr old dog, Josie, has had an eye irritation for about a week now. It’s only one eye, and we started to notice that it’s pink around the inside of her eyelid.

She also started developing this mucous discharge which has to be cleaned quite often. The discharge is not watery, but viscous and sometimes it will harden if we don’t pay attention for a few hours.

She’s been itching it a bit, and in the mornings, usually when she wakes up, it looks considerably smaller than the left eye, though during the day you can’t really notice (size difference). I’m guessing it might be pink eye from the research I did.

My question is whether I should take her in to the vet and if you think she will need antibiotics.

I love her to death so I’d do that, but want to make sure that it makes sense to bring her in and it’s not just allergies or something.

My boyfriend has a weird philosophy that maybe it has to do with the fact that sometimes she goes around eating poop, probably our other dogs’… and the bacteria from that maybe (we are trying to figure out how to stop her from doing this – she doesn’t do it often, we don’t think, but we catch her once in a while).

Anyway, if you think she doesn’t need a vet, what can we do to make the irritation go away? Also, is it contagious? Dog to dog or dog to human?

Unfortunately she hates pictures, so I tried to do my best since she kept moving. In the photos you can see the inside of her eye being pink (it’s not as obvious in the pictures).

Thanks so much for your help!