Dog’s horror injury after stick gets caught in eye socket, vet performs emergency surgery

Graphic warning. A Wauchope vet has saved a young staffy from major injury after his owners found him with a bizarre injury. She said it was miraculous that further damage wasn't done.

A young dog has walked away unscathed from an horrific looking eye injury after his owners returned home to find and 8cm stick wedged inside his eye.

After suffering the shock of their life from the sight of the stick, they called the after hours vet line at Wauchope and reached the on-call surgeon Dr Elise Cooper.

“They were horrified,” Ms Cooper, who has shared vision of Gus’ surgery on Facebook, said.

“I‘ve only been in practice a couple of years, but you just don’t see things like that very often. It’s definitely not something we see every day.”

Without any explanation at all, the stick had somehow found its way into Gus’ eye at what Ms Cooper said could only have been at ‘high velocity’ incident. She hypothesised that it may have been from playing with one of Gus’ brothers or sisters, outside.

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She said the injury must have happened quickly due to the lack of visible trauma and absence of bleeding present.

“The owners have absolutely no idea how it happened, did he run in to something and it go into his eye? Was he playing with one of the other dogs? The owners were horrified.”

“It is a pretty rare occurrence for a stick to force its way in like that.

“It would have to have been moving at high velocity because there is no way that a dog would stay still for something like that.”

Due to the delicate nature of the injury, Dr Cooper took no chances putting Gus — a staffordshire terrier-labrador crossbreed under a full anaesthetic, before taking less than a minute to remove the stick from his eye.

She said she wanted it removed as soon as possible, so that she could undertake an assessment of the eye ball and its structure to determine if there was any damage.

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A quick post-surgical scan of the affected area luckily found no resulting issues.

“The outside of the eye looked angry when I removed it, but there was no external wounding or bleeding,” she said.

The surgery was performed back in February, but photos and a video of the operation wer only posted to the Wauchope Vet Facebook page last week.

“Gross alert!!” the post to Facebook read.

“A very extreme case of "my dog has a stick in his eye!"

“Gus somehow got this big stick wedged in between his eye and his eyelids late one night … Elise never expected it to be this large thought! The video shows it being removed (while Gus is anaesthetised to avoid further damage to the structures around his eye).

Six months after the surgery and Dr Cooper said Gus’ vision is not impaired at all and the wound around it has completely healed.

“You wouldn’t even be able to tell that there was anything wrong with it,” she said.

“He was really lucky and it was a very satisfying surgery.