The danger of assumption

02 July 2024
2 mins read
Volume 15 · Issue 6

Luckily for me, hay fever season seems to have passed for this year, although I know many are not so fortunate! My symptoms are mainly eye-related, and while irritating, I can manage them well with eye drops.

Recently, a friend mentioned that their dog seemed to be suffering from hay fever this year, with red, itchy eyes the main symptom. This set off alarm bells – I'm not veterinary qualified, but I've read enough issues of this journal to know that eyes are not something to mess around with. What starts as something relatively innocuous can quickly have serious consequences with eyes. When I looked into it, I found that while dogs can experience hay fever, they are more likely to get itchy skin than eyes (Blue Cross, 2023).

My friend did get their dog checked out at the veterinary surgery and determined that they in fact had conjunctivitis, likely caused by an infection. This saga made me wonder how often people assume they know what is wrong with their pets and self-treat at home. While the internet can be a wonderful thing, the danger is that people use Google to decide on a diagnosis, and then buy treatment online. This is something I have seen in the comments sections on newspaper articles when discussing the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation into veterinary practice – ‘Oh, I avoid expensive fees by just buying online!’. I can understand the temptation of this – who doesn't want to save money if they can? But I do worry about how often this backfires and leads to further serious complications or even death in extreme cases. Many people may not be aware that some common drugs used in simple human illnesses are dangerous for pets. For example, paracetamol can be extremely toxic to cats as they lack the ability to break it down (International Cat Care, 2020). Most pet owners just want the best for their animals and would be mortified to realise they had caused harm.

Register now to continue reading

Thank you for visiting The Veterinary Nurse and reading some of our peer-reviewed content for veterinary professionals. To continue reading this article, please register today.