ideas on how to prevent

[perabalaofmystery]

a chin from getting dust/debris in her eyes?
background story
i have taken my chin to the vet countless times about her eye problems. bone/tooth spurs and malo have been ruled out by 2 different exotic vets in my area. shes had xrays and tooth exams done.

occasionally every 2-4 months her eye will get irritated and or she will get some "gunk" in an eye and ill flush it out with saline drops. this last time she got an eye infection. i took her to the vet to get meds and checked out.

skip forward a week or so and shes all better from her eye infection and i give her her first dust bath since she was sick.(she gets one 2 times a week usually) and i made the connection while watching her bathe. she doesn't close her eyes when she bathes. and when she got out i noticed she had dust in her eye. (so again i clean it out with saline.)
as a note i use blue cloud dust for my chins baths
short of constantly prodding her in the head while shes bathing she will not close her eyes.

has anyone had this/a similar problem before?
any ideas to attempt to prevent it?
i dont know what else to do/try.

im at my wits end trying to help my silly little girl.

 

[greychins]

We had a rescue like this once. Can't say it was every week, but routinely, this chin would get something in her eye, we'd flush it out with saline, and she'd be fine. And then the next month... rinse and repeat. Just got a call last week from her adoptive home that she had something in her eye... told them what we did, they followed instructions, and shes' fine again. Like you, we'd ruled out teeth problems/malo or any other actual cause, the chin just kept getting stuff in her eye.

Anyway... I really have no solution for you, but I just wanted to share that we have dealt with a similar situation. We'd tried going from shavings to liners with her, thinking maybe cause she was sleeping on shavings.. .that wasn't it. So back to shavings. Well, can't live without dust, so... it just ended up being something we had to do for her every so often (flush out the eye -- she never developed an infection like yours did).

 

[perabalaofmystery]

thanks for sharing your story with me . im at lest glad to know it happens to someone else.
.
i to tried shavings and fleece. and it didnt make a difference. so its currently a litter pan and fleece for her. and daily vaccumings. and i clean the cage(wiping and scrubbing entirely every 3 days)

shes my little baby and i plan on doing what i need to keep her healthy. even if shes currently mad and skittish around me from 3-4 times daily burrito-ing her for meds and examining her last week from the infection .though my other chinny has been great through most of this shes stopped most of her bad behaviors and has been a great comfort to Gummi(the eye problem prone chiny)

now what i really need are some chinny goggles.

 

[Stackie]

Do you have an open dust bath container or closed? Using something open like a litter pan may help, or may not do any good...but may be worth a shot. The idea is that the dust cloud will be more widely dispersed instead of contained like in those enclosed Super Pet dust houses.

 

[perabalaofmystery]

i use a uncoverd baking pan. and ive even tried having a fan point in her direction to blow all the airborne dust away as she kicks it up.
it reduces the frequency that she gets stuff in her eyes.

as stupid as it sounds the best method i have discovered is poking her lightly in the head( its kinda a similar motion to giving her scritches) it gets her to blink at least or to close her eyes for a bit while shes bathing and giving her very short baths.

 

[Brittany]

I've had two chins with a sensitivity to dust. I've found that using an open container helps (see attached picture). I also give them less dust then I would a normal chin. Maybe a few tablespoons, I've never actually measured it.

Lily had a history of eye infections, I would always flush her bad eye out with fake tears after she bathed.

Jameson just appears to have allergies. I usually have to wipe a little gunk from his eyes when he's done, but I only have to do it once or twice after the bath and he's good to go. No prolonged problems with him.