Not only humans can be short-sighted. Also the one or other animal, with the view in the distance, so its problems. And even if one’considers s to be possible: there and back even the optometrist to get.
Piper looks like a normal Border Collie: long, black-and-white fur, forward-tilted ears, dear face. She’s acting completely normal, curious and likes to crawl.
Even their owner, Uwe and Andrea kersch sieper from Oberhausen, did not know for many years that the dog lady is extremely short-sighted. They wondered just that the playing ball worked with her so well. “If we threw you a Ball, Piper turned away only the head, instead of catching him,” says Uwe kersch sieper. “But, well, we thought she was just lazy.” And his wife, Andrea, adds: “Or that you may not have understood the game.”
For well over a year, the couple knows the true reason: the Piper has to minus 3.5 diopters. She sees the flying Ball just too late. One who is nearsighted, is aware of how the environment is blurred without corrective lenses.
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See helps when Jumping
From the Balls apart, Piper, their short-sightedness in everyday life, nothing says Andrea kersch sieper. Walks in the forest, she copes very well.
Really noticeable Pipers makes short-sightedness in the dog sport, Agility. The animals must overcome is analogous to jumping horses, an obstacle course, crawling through tunnels, running over bridges and jump over hurdles, led by their owners.
Piper trained once a week in the dog sport hall in Wülfrath, a town in the vicinity of Wuppertal. And that makes her also a lot of fun: If other dogs are in the series, she sits blubbering next to the course and can’t wait to finally get started.
However, With the Jump Piper always had difficulties. “She always jumps too early, and in the case of double barriers it breaks then the rear bar,” explains Andrea kersch sieper. “We made 2.5 years with your jump training, with barriers of different heights and different distances. But it has changed nothing.”
No wonder, leap training helps finally not against short-sightedness. What really helps: Piper gets in front of the Training now is always a pair of glasses.
Visual AIDS for dogs
Piper holds obediently still while his master überstreift her glasses. By the way, is pink – “my wife picked out the color,” explains Uwe kersch sieper quickly.
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Glasses for dogs looks like a floating pair of glasses – only with the appropriate diopter strength
Otherwise, the dog glasses look like swimming goggles made of plastic, but has the same two rubber bands: One kersch sieper fastened behind Piper’s head, one under her chin. “Under the chin I do it a little tight, otherwise the glasses will slip later,” he explains. Then he controlled, whether on the ears, everything sits nicely. Finally, Piper gets a treat, because she is so sweet. In the beginning, they have always tried the glasses with the paws to wipe, but the have the Kerschsiepers her quickly to get rid of.
Short-sighted dogs are not unusual, explains Ariane Petzold, Eyes veterinarian in Aachen. It is one of the few specialists in Europe for refractive errors in animals. Petzold has studied Piper about a year ago, and then the glasses made. “Yes, short-sightedness is also found in animals,” she said, “not only in dogs but also in cats and horses.”
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“How many diopters does my dog?”
Whether an animal is actually short-sighted, is not so easy to determine as in humans. “I can’t put the course in front of a panel and to me the letter to read, which are getting smaller and smaller,” says the veterinarian and laughs.
Instead, she uses a device called a Retinoscope, which is applied also in the case of infants. In order to light up your patient in the eye. How the light beam moves on the retina of the eye, draws you to conclusions as to whether the animal is normal-, short – or far-sighted.
Then Ariane Petzold uses strength to glasses of different Diopters. This is not much different than the people opticians also, she says: “When you put on his chin, and somewhere by the looks, try the optician different lenses and asks: ‘Better, worse?’ These lenses I have in a bar, as in a ruler.”
Keeps you in front of the eye of the animal and increased the strength until the measurement indicates a normal-sighted eye. Then the animal know doctor, how much the diopter needs the animal.
With such a diopter-the exact eyesight of the dog bar will be measured
Now it works also with the Bounce
Piper is now in her Element: her dog sport training has begun. You race through a Tunnel and then takes a hurdle. “Yep!” calls Agility Trainer, Daniel Schroeder. “The jumps well today.”
Schroeder trained family kersch sieper for many years and has noticed, what can make a pair of glasses. “In Piper, the Jumps have become much better,” says the young, dynamic dog trainer. “In the past, you backed out often to early and then in the rod. Not longer, or only very rarely happens with the glasses.”
However, the glasses Pipers concentrated lateral field-of-view, and it makes for Uwe kersch sieper in the course more difficult: He has to give her earlier and more commands, so that you know where it’s going next.
Daniel Schroeder also knows a couple of short-sighted dogs who train with contact lenses. However, he holds high the risk of injury to law. If the dog rams with the eye of a rod, could cause the foreign body quite a damage in the eye, he feared. Contact lenses lost also, during the Training fast and go for 90 Euro per piece, then into money.
In the case of short-sighted competition horses, however, contact lenses Standard, told Petzold, since goggles for horses. Cats need neither spectacles nor contact lenses, simply because there is so far no cat sports. If there is a cat in the flat misses the Sofa, and prized you the next Time a bit longer.
An unknown phenomenon
Yet, science knows very little about refractive errors in dogs, such as they arise, or whether they are inherited, says Eyes vet Petzold.
Piper’s half-brother is also short-sighted, which speaks perhaps to a genetic predisposition.
US researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, Berkeley, have found that short-sightedness in some dog breeds most frequently occurs, such as in the case of Rottweiler, and German shepherd dogs.
But animals need to drive a car, watch no TV, and rely much more on their sense of smell than we humans. No wonder, then, that short-sighted animals have in everyday life a lot less trouble – and the phenomenon, therefore, is hardly known.
Also Piper has the glasses just because her Agility is so much fun, says Andrea kersch sieper. “The top is really hot. This is her Sport, and was always your Sport, otherwise we would have to stop.” Who’s watching Piper in Agility, then you know how right your wife has.
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