This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Aparna Shah teaches Virginia Tech students how the human eye turns light into sight. In May, she saw her dog lose his.
Ziggy had started walking toward the bathroom door instead of the bedroom door. The 9-year-old bluetick beagle was heading for the wrong corners of a room he knew by heart. Shah and her husband, Ashwan Lewis M.I.T. '26, brought him to the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine's Veterinary Teaching Hospital, where the ophthalmology team found a partially detached retina.
Within a day, Ziggy received a steroid injection adjacent to the eye. A week to 10 days later, he could see again. "That was, to us, somewhat miraculous," said Shah, collegiate assistant professor of neuroscience in the College of Science.
The injection was part of a novel approach Ian Herring, associate professor of ophthalmology, has used to manage Ziggy's rare autoimmune disease, which had already claimed one of his eyes. Herring turned to it because the standard immunosuppressive treatment could have put Ziggy's spine at risk from inflammation for which he was also being treated. Herring said Ziggy's case will shape how he treats the condition from now on.
Ziggy's trouble began just before Thanksgiving 2025. His third eyelid was protruding, and he was squinting. It was a weekend, so Shah and Lewis took him to the teaching hospital's emergency service, where clinicians suspected uveitis—inflammation inside the eye—and prescribed medication to ease swelling and pressure.
Their primary care veterinarian monitored Ziggy's eye pressure, adjusted his drops and referred him to the hospital's ophthalmology service. When Herring examined him, the left eye had lost its vision to severe glaucoma and was likely painful. It had to come out, both for Ziggy's comfort and for what it could reveal.
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