Your Dogs Eyes The Most Important Yet Overlooked Part Of Your Dogs Body
No other organ
in your dogs body
contains such an intricate and complex
mechanism in such
a small structure as
the eyes.
A thorough
examination of the eye can only
be made by
your veterinarian, but hopefully through
our brief description
given here, you will as
at least know
enough to spot a problem when
it arises.
The first seen when examining your pets eyes
are the upper and
lower eyelids specialized curtains to protect
the eyes. Eyelids should be smooth and sharp. The eye margin
or center of the lower lid should not turn in or turn out. Be sure
the eyelids and hairs on
the nose do not rub
the eyeball.
Sometimes these hairs can be distorted and misdirected and can irritate the eye.
A smooth, pink tissue, called the conjunctiva, can be seen covering the inner surface
of the lids.
The conjunction
helps lubricate the eyeball and protect it from infection. The space between the eyelid conjunction and the eyeball conjunctiva
is the conjunctiva sac. If the conjunctiva is red or swollen, or if there is a green or
yellowish discharge, an inflammation of the tissue is present.
The cornea is the clear front window of the eye that bends the incoming light rays. The cornea can lose its clarity if it becomes inflamed or injured. Hairs and twigs can injure the cornea, especially in
pop-eyed dogs. The
sclera is the fibrous coat the gives the eyeball its
ping-pong ball shape and dull white color. The
sclera frequently takes on a yellow color, (jaundice) in dogs experiencing liver problems.
The iris controls the amount of light
entering the back of the eye and gives your dogs eye its color. The black hole in the center of the iris is the pupil. It dilates (gets larger), to let more light enter in dim light, and constricts (gets smaller) in bright light. Cataracts are white opacities that block the lights passage through the eye, and can be seen by shining a bright light into the pupil of the eye. A normal aging process called senile
cataracts, or nuclear sclerosis, is caused by a rearrangement of the fibers and a loss of water in the older lens.
Randy Jones and his partner Brent Jones have been in the pet industry for a long time. Recently they formed
http://www.joncopets.com. On the site, customers can shop for the latest
dog collars, dog
clothes, pet supplies and more. Check them
out at http://www.joncopets.com.
Pet Parrot
It
had been
years since
I last visited my boyhood
chum Ricky.
He used to be a teammate
of mine on
the school baseball team, but
he was
obviously the better athlete since
he was
also on the school football team
and basketball
team. But
I actually haven't seen him
practicing much the last few months
and when I visited him at home, I discovered why. To my great surprise, Ricky was enamored with his pet parrots.
He had about a dozen
of them
in one big cage in all colors, shapes and
sizes. It was like an
explosion in a
paint factory. Ricky even had names
for all of them and had started buying all the books he
could find about parrots. I started reading
these books and was absolutely fascinated about
what I discovered.
There
are actually two groups of parrot families -- the cacatuidae
or cockatoos and the Psittacidae or true parrots. It turns out
that there are exactly 353 species of birds that can fall under these two categories. The common characteristics they share
include a curve shaped beak with the
upper mandible having limited mobility and an
erect stance. Did you know that all
parrots have four toes on each foot, two at the front and two at the back?
Wherever its warm, youre
likely going to find a parrot
there. These include such places like India, Southeast Asia and West Africa.
There was also one parrot breed that could be found only in the United States but it is now
extinct, the Carolina Parakeet. According to studies, the most
number of parrot species can be found in Australasia, South America and Central America.
Among the types of parrots that are usually
kept as pets are the conures, macaws, Amazons, cockatoos,
African Greys, lovebirds, Cockatiels, Budgerigars and parakeets, mainly because they are richly colored and boast of
many different color combinations. People sometimes clip the wings of their pet parrots to keep them earth-bound. Others
prefer to keep their parrots flighted. There are parrots that can live up to 80
years, including cockatoos, Amazon parrots, African Grey
Parrots and the larger macaws, have very long life-spans of up to 80 years.
Kadence Buchanan writes articles for
http://etotallypets.com/ - In addition, Kadence also writes articles for
http://worldofartandleisure.com/ and
http://familyinformationsource.com/.