Maltese Tear Stains: Causes and Prevention

A little dampness at the inner corner of the eye is normal in a Maltese. An orange face is not, and it is nearly always a symptom of something you can find and fix. The stain is the last step in a chain: something makes the eye water more than it should, the hair under it stays wet, and wet white hair turns red. Treat the stain and it comes back. Find the cause and it stops.

Teething

The commonest cause in a puppy, and the one that cures itself. From about four months to about eight, the adult teeth push through and the whole face is inflamed, and the eyes water with it. If your puppy's staining started around four months, wait it out with daily cleaning and expect it to ease once the molars are in and any retained baby teeth are gone. In an older dog, dirty or decaying teeth do the same thing; a dental is often the cure for an adult's staining.

Hair in the eyes

The cause most owners never consider. Fine hairs from the forehead and the bridge of the nose curl into the eye and irritate it all day, and the eye waters to flush them. Check under the eyelids daily for a stray hair. Keep the topknot up and redo it morning and night. Train the hair on the muzzle to lie away from the eyes with a little styling gel. Do not clip the hair around the eyes short: it grows back as stubble pointing straight into the eye and makes everything worse. If it has already been clipped, let it grow and train it.

Blocked tear ducts

Tears normally drain through a tiny duct at the inner corner of the eye into the nose. In many toy breeds that duct is narrow or blocked, and the tears have nowhere to go but down the face. A vet can test it in minutes with a drop of dye and can usually flush a blocked duct under a light sedation. If a dog's staining is heavy and constant and nothing else explains it, this is the test to ask for.

Ears

An ear infection or ear mites will make the eye on the same side water, and a Maltese ear, heavily feathered and poorly ventilated, is prone to both. Any dark discharge, smell, head shaking or scratching at an ear is worth a vet visit, and cleaning and drying the ears after every bath prevents most of it.

Low-grade infection

Chronically wet hair under the eye breeds bacteria and yeast, which irritate the eye further, which keeps the hair wet. Breaking that cycle sometimes needs more than cleaning. Vets can prescribe eye drops or, in stubborn cases, a short course of oral medication; some owners use an over-the-counter boric acid eye wash morning and night. Whatever is used should come from a vet who has looked at the eye, because a dog that rubs its face may also have a scratched cornea, and that needs treatment, not whitening.

Diet and water

Food dyes, cheap fillers and high-mineral tap water are all blamed for staining, with more conviction than evidence. They are cheap to rule out: feed a good food without colourings, and offer filtered or bottled water for a month. Some dogs improve. A genuine food allergy is the least likely cause of tear staining, particularly in a puppy, and a diet trial is the last thing to try rather than the first.

Irritants

Dust, pollen, smoke, the dryer on hot, and the family cat's litter all irritate eyes. If staining is seasonal or started when something in the house changed, that is a clue.

The daily routine that prevents it

Twice a day: wipe under the eyes with a cloth damp with water or saline, comb the hair out, dry it, and dust it with a little plain cornstarch, never talc. Once a day: redo the topknot and check for stray hairs. Once a week: ears cleaned and dried. Done from the day the puppy comes home, this takes two minutes and most Maltese never develop a stain worth whitening. If a stain is already there, the stain removal page explains how to lift it safely, and why nothing should ever be bleached near an eye.

Heredity

Some lines tear more than others: eye shape, the set of the lids and the size of the duct are inherited. It is one more small reason to see a puppy's parents, or their photographs, before you buy. A breeder whose adults have clean white faces is a breeder whose puppies are likely to.