It Matches Her Coat

Today I turned someone's dog orange.

Fortunately, it was a classmate, not a client, and it was during an ophthalmology practical lab. Which, by the way, no one told us we had until the ophthalmologist actually walked through the door into the hospital and we're like, "Uhhh, I guess we do have a prac this afternoon." It was finally confirmed that it was supposed to take place at 1pm (confirmed at 1pm), and as we all rush to arrive--including a number of students off on lunch--we suddenly realised we also had no idea where the prac was. Also it was very inconveniently timed and I had to miss my only consult for the day, rendering my day rather useless.

Anyway, back to the point--orangeness. Amongst other things, we were given a bunch of fluorescein dye to put in the dogs' eyes. It sticks to ulcers, glows under UV light, and just drains out through the tear ducts and into the nose. Usually you squirt it into the eye with a syringe or dropper or something, but for some reason we had a bazillion little strips with dye-coated tips. I used one of those. Why not?

There were only three dogs. One had some eye pathology so was constantly surrounded by a cloud of students and had lights shined into both eyes for pretty much the entire duration of the lab. One was teeny tiny and at that moment also being examined by others. So I selected the remaining dog, my classmate's, considering people were just sitting by her, talking. I should mention that this dog has white fur.

I went ahead and stuck the strip in like normal, but the dog squinted her eye shut around it really tightly, to the point that the eyelid rolled inward. After about 10 seconds, it became clear that orange was seeping out around her eye. I removed the strip and she opened the eye. She suddenly had a giant spot all around her eye, bright orange. It seemed to be an inordinately large spot considering the procedure, and it was contrasted nicely by the sheer whiteness of the fur around it.

To be fair, I did get the fluorescein into her eye. I don't think she has an ulcer.

(To add insult to injury, no one was paying much attention to the fluorescein strips, and I'm pretty sure some of my classmates thought something had gone horribly wrong with the syringe/dropper method.)