Why I Stopped Using Dog Goggles and Decided to Make My Own

When my first dog, Lime, was six, I started looking for dog goggles. The first pair came off whenever she shook her head. The second left water droplets in the fur around her eyes. I stopped using both. This is the story of how that experience, and one cold bike ride when Lime was ten, led me to decide to make dog goggles myself.

 

When Lime was six

When Lime turned six, I noticed her eyes had taken on a slight blue tint, and I took her to the vet. My vet said it was early, but cataracts seemed to be starting, and prescribed eye drops meant to slow their progression. I used them for a while. I wondered how much they could really help.

Then I heard that dogs, like people, might benefit from wearing sunglasses, something to do with cataracts or aging. I had no way of judging whether that was true.

My work took me overseas often. On a business trip to the US, I bought a pair of dog goggles that was popular at the time, including in Korea.

The first pair of dog goggles came off

They had two separate lenses, and they were easy to put on. But when Lime shook her head, they slid off. I tightened the strap, and then tightened it again. It didn't change anything. If she shook her head or tried to paw them off, they came off.

The second pair left water droplets around her eyes

Some time later I got to try another pair, also well known in the US. This one was goggle-style, with a single lens, so there was less to line up with her eyes than with the first pair.

One day when the sun was very strong, I put them on Lime and we went for a drive. When I looked at her, she wasn't moving the way she usually did. I couldn't tell why. On a hunch, I took the goggles off. Lime is a Schnauzer, and the fur around her eyes, where the goggles had been, was covered in water droplets.

I didn't know what had caused it. Maybe the lens didn't let air through. Maybe it was just midsummer heat. Maybe both. What I do know is what I saw: Lime seemed very uncomfortable.

Protection that made her uncomfortable

I wanted to protect her eyes. But what if wearing the protection was more stressful for her than whatever it was meant to protect her from?

I didn't want to keep making her uncomfortable for a benefit I couldn't even be sure of. I stopped using goggles that day.

It felt to me as if goggles truly made with dogs in mind didn't exist. If I ever made goggles for dogs someday, I thought, I'd want them to be comfortable even for a sensitive dog, the kind who finds even clothes uncomfortable.

A question I couldn't put down

There are many products designed around the human body. I couldn't stop wondering why there weren't goggles designed around a dog's body.

I also kept thinking about how much shorter a dog's life is than ours. To me, aging and illness seemed to reach dogs much sooner. Among my friends' dogs, I had seen one with a short muzzle get poked in the eye while sniffing, and another whose eye had turned white. Was this something to accept just because a dog was getting older? Or was there something that could be done in advance?

I have put on sunscreen every day since I was twenty. Nobody made me. It was a habit I built myself. Twenty years later, my skin and the skin of a friend who never bothered looked quite different to me. That experience didn't tell me anything about a dog's eyes. But it had shaped the way I thought about prevention: sometimes what you do today only makes sense years later.

Lime loved her walks. I wondered whether the sun might be harder on her than I had assumed. I didn't know.

A cold ride when she was ten

When Lime was ten, we went out cycling together. She had always loved riding with me. On the downhills I would pedal hard and we'd speed down together, both of us enjoying it. Each time, she would rise a little behind my back to smell the air: sniff, sniff, sniff. I could hear it close to my ear, and I loved that sound. It calmed me, too.

That day, she didn't do it. Instead of turning toward the wind, she hid behind my back.

At first I didn't understand why. Before long, I put it together: the weather had turned colder, and with our speed, the wind was cold. I wondered if it was bothering her eyes.

I was wearing sunglasses. She had nothing. Why was I protecting my own eyes and not hers? I felt guilty.

For years I had told myself that someday I would make better goggles for dogs. That day, the thought changed. I needed to make them before she got any older.

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Note: This is a personal development story, not veterinary advice or a claim about the prevention or treatment of eye conditions.