--- title: "After My Bird Dog Was Nearly Blinded, This Ridiculous Piece of Gear Is the One Thing I’ll Never Hunt Without" description: "After my dog was nearly blinded (twice) this bird season, I'll never hunt without goggles again. Here's why." date: "2025-12-24" modified: "2025-12-24" authors: - name: "Natalie Krebs" job_title: "Executive Editor" link: "https://www.outdoorlife.com/authors/natalie-krebs/" url: "https://www.outdoorlife.com/hunting/bird-dog-goggles/" categories: - "Hunting" - "Hunting Dogs" - "Upland Bird Hunting" tags: - "Evergreen" - "News" --- # After My Bird Dog Was Nearly Blinded, This Ridiculous Piece of Gear Is the One Thing I’ll Never Hunt Without ![A dog wearing goggles fetches up a rooster.]() *The author's dog fetches up a public rooster that fell in a cattail slough. Photo by Natalie Krebs* My four-year-old Labrador had been on dove duty for a full week. Hatchet marked and retrieved mourning doves shot in the decoys, but mostly he was locating birds eager shooters had sailed among the scorched sunflowers and crispy ragweed. The oppressive heat made finding them that much harder. This went on for several days. The skin around Hatchet’s eyes swelled and itched and bled. He scratched and rubbed them, compounding the problem. My dog looked less like a yellow Lab and more like an actor in an allergy commercial. Eye rinse helped, but didn’t prevent fresh cuts and scrapes, or stray seeds from gathering in his eyes. ![A yellow Lab holds a dove.]() *Hatchet's eyes are irritated after a few days of dove hunting. Photo by Natalie Krebs* Finally it got so bad that I bought a pair of [Rex Specs](), the ridiculous-looking goggles you see marketed for the sort of [dogs bred to take out Osama bin Laden]() but instead end up on overstimulated doodles. Our dove season was over by the time the goggles arrived, but I trained Hatchet to wear them anyway and stashed them in the truck — just in case. ## Eye Injuries in Bird Dogs ![A dog retrieves a dove from thick cover.]() *Hatchet emerges from thick cover with a winged dove — and sore eyes. Photo by Natalie Krebs* A month and a half later, Hatchet and I had just killed our limit of wild roosters when I noticed he was squinting. It was our eighth day of hunting and he was due for a couple days rest. Instead, we drove two hours in the middle of the night to the nearest emergency vet in Fargo, North Dakota. No amount of eye rinse could dislodge what looked like a piece of grass embedded in his cornea, the transparent outer layer of the eye. My vet and the graveyard-shift receptionist I had spoken to were clear: eye problems are always an emergency. If left untreated, foreign objects can migrate, rupture the eyeball, and cause blindness. My dog needed surgery to remove the grass, stat. ![A dog squinting on a tailgate.]() *Hatchet squinting during a tailgate check, the night the author discovered grass embedded in his cornea. Photo by Natalie Krebs* ![A piece of grass embedded in a dog's cornea.]() *The vertical line running through the dog's eye is a piece of grass embedded in the cornea; the grass extracted during surgery. Photos by Natalie Krebs* I slept in my truck in the vet parking lot and received my doped-up dog at 4 a.m. Hatchet promptly dragged me into the cedar bushes around the clinic to trail rabbits. Stoned out of his mind on residual anesthesia and pain meds, he repeatedly tried to shove his face into the bushes, risking the open wound in his eye — cone-of-shame be damned. I grabbed the goggles. It’s common for Hatchet to get seeds or other debris in his eyes during hunts, especially because he excels at working thick cover where roosters like to hide. Whenever we return to the truck after hunting a spot, I’ll do a quick tailgate check — literally examining a dog on your tailgate so he’s at eye level. I look in his eyes to check for foreign bodies (along with his nostrils, mouth, and ears, and I also run my hands along his paw pads and coat). Sometimes that means tiny seeds or cattail fluff or tiny pieces of sticks. To remove foreign bodies, I keep [eye rinse]() in the truck and flush his eyes liberally. I also keep clean Q-tips around, which are handy for lifting seeds when gently pressed to the corner of the eye. (The dry cotton on tear-soaked schmutz sucks them right out.) Foxtails and grass awns are particularly dangerous because their sharp ends can puncture skin (anywhere on the body) and cause infection, abscesses, or migrate into the body. Watch your dog for signs of squinting, blinking, runny eyes, or pawing at his face. Even if your dog’s eye looks okay, there’s a chance he could have an issue you can’t see (like something lodged under the third eyelid) that will require a vet visit. After a week off, Hatchet was cleared to hunt again — as long as he wore eye pro. We hit our favorite spots and took several new hunters out to kill their first pheasants. Soon Hatchet was rousting birds out of overgrown creek bottoms and tracking down crippled roosters in cattails. The doggles proved a mild nuisance, but one he tolerated in order to hunt. ![A dog wearing goggles fetches up a rooster.]() *Fetching up a lively rooster. The doggles restrict his vision and make it harder to mark fallen birds. Photo by Natalie Krebs* It was nearly two weeks out from his surgery when I unloaded Hatchet for a final hunt with buddies. We were a half-mile from the truck when I realized I’d forgotten his goggles. I weighed the risks. Though scar tissue remained (it will take months to fully heal) the open wound in the cornea had closed. This was his fifth season, and this eye injury had been a freak accident. So we pushed forward and hunted anyway. In the last minute of shooting light, Hatchet flushed and retrieved a rookie’s first rooster. That evening his right eye was running again. He was squinting and there was a huge tear trail down the side of his face. This time it took me just a second to diagnose the problem. There was a piece of grass in the same cornea — not embedded in the scar tissue, but broken off in the healthy cornea beside it. In a bizarre (and costly) rerun, we drove to the same clinic in Fargo in the middle of the night, and I turned my dog over to the surgeon on call. ## To Run Dog Goggles, or Not ![A dog fetches a green head while wearing goggles.]() *Seeds, debris, and moisture accumulate on the goggles, and the straps get soaked and cold on near-freezing days. Photo by Natalie Krebs* Two surgeries, two eye specialists, and six total vet visits later, and I’m told Hatchet’s eye will heal fine. I’m not sure how he ended up with the same freak injury twice. (Perhaps pain meds and recovery made him more vulnerable to injury, or maybe he just has flimsy corneas.) Either way, it’s an accident most bird dogs will happily never experience. Ask your buddies — most will say their dogs have never had an issue. Yet it’s an injury common enough that some vets who work rural areas during bird season recommend goggles. Indeed, the only healthy bird dogs I know who wear goggles to hunt belong to veterinarians. Compared to the thousands of dollars in vet bills I spent on my dog this fall, $100 for goggles and spare lenses is a no-brainer. (I did decline [the absurd visor-like contraption]() one eye specialist suggested because it would be a disaster in pheasant cover.) ![A photo of a dog fetching a rooster from thick cover.]() *Finding and fetching roosters in thick cover. Photo by Natalie Krebs* There are clear downsides to doggles. The more stuff your dog wears, the more likely he is to get hung up on something — perhaps when he’s out of sight from you. Sticks (yes, an entire stick) and other debris gets lodged in the goggles. The straps get soaked and frozen depending on the conditions. The lenses fog, gather moisture from vegetation, and scratch, making it difficult for Hatchet to see easily and mark fallen birds. We lost three scrappy roosters this season that I feel sure wouldn’t have escaped if Hatchet had an unobstructed view. But as one of the many vets I’ve spoke to this fall told me, no solution is perfect for protecting your dog from the hazards of hunting. To shield them from injury entirely would require never hunting them. And that’s certainly not an option. I’m not sure if I’ll make him wear dog goggles every season after this one. But keeping a pair of goggles handy? That’s a small price to pay to keep my dog hunting. ## Author Natalie Krebs is the Executive Editor of *Outdoor Life*, where she tackles everything from reporting digital features to producing podcast episodes. Originally from Missouri, she currently lives in northwest Arkansas with her bird dog, Hatchet. ### Author social links [Twitter]() [LinkedIn]()