Tear StainLess Chew Formula

The rust-colored tear line under a bulldog’s eye is pigment, not dirt. Tears carry porphyrins, iron-containing compounds, and when fur stays wet with them the pigment soaks in, sets and then darkens in daylight. That is why owners tell me they have scrubbed the face for a month and the stain has not moved. They are working on the wrong end of the problem.

Wiping the face is cleaning the bathroom mirror. Perfectly reasonable, and it looks better for an hour, but while the room is full of steam the mirror keeps fogging. The extractor fan is the part that changes the outcome. A chew is the extractor fan: it works on the tearing and the staining from the inside, while a wipe deals with what has already landed.

These are soft chews with natural botanicals, and worth noting, they are Tylan free. Tylan is tylosin, an antibiotic that turns up in a surprising number of tear-stain products sold without any veterinary conversation, and feeding a dog an antibiotic for a cosmetic reason is not something I am willing to recommend. This formula works instead on supporting the immune system and on helping the mucous membranes around the eye stay lubricated and comfortable.

Judge it on the fur that grows in from here, not on the stain that is already in the coat, because nothing taken by mouth bleaches fur that is already stained. Give it a good few weeks and watch the new growth at the inner corner of the eye. It works best alongside the dull mechanical half of the job, which is wiping and, above all, drying the wrinkle under the eye. Heavy, sudden or one-sided tearing has causes of its own worth asking your own veterinarian about.

Not sure if this is the right one? The Bully Tear StainLess XL Wipes are the outside half of this job, and the chew plus the wipe is how I would run it. If the wrinkle under the eye has gone pink or smelly from staying damp, the Bully Wrinkles Antiseptic Lotion is built for that fold. Owners tackling a stained face usually want the chew and the wipe together, which is cheaper as a V4B bundle.

Important: this page is educational and is not a diagnosis or a treatment plan for your own bulldog. Tear staining is a sign of excess tearing, and the tearing itself can have a cause worth identifying, so a watery or uncomfortable eye deserves a look from your veterinarian.