You notice it at the back door. Your dog comes to the top of the steps, stops, and tips their whole head sideways to find you — not the curious head tilt, the periscope version. What was a tidy fringe after their last haircut has grown down past the eyes, and now they're looking at the world through it.
Hair in your dog's eyes is one of the few grooming questions with three genuinely defensible answers: cut it short, tie it up, or leave it alone. Which one is right depends on the dog, the coat, and honestly how much daily maintenance you want in your life. It's your dog and your call — here's what actually goes into making it.
Is hair in your dog's eyes actually a problem?
Sometimes yes, and sometimes not at all. The useful thing is knowing which situation you're in, because there's a purely cosmetic version of this question and there's a medical one, and they can look similar from the couch.
The medical version has a name. Veterinary ophthalmology sources describe trichiasis as hair growing from a normal place on the dog that ends up contacting the cornea or the lining of the eyelid. It shows up in two groups in particular: flat-faced breeds with prominent eyes and nasal skin folds — Pekingese, Pugs, Shih Tzu, Lhasa Apso, Bulldogs — and breeds that simply grow long hair around the eyes, like Cocker Spaniels, Maltese, Havanese, Bichons, Poodles and a lot of terriers. Left going on long enough, that constant contact can cause lasting corneal changes, including pigment and scarring.
Two things follow from that, and they pull in opposite directions, which is why this isn't a one-size answer.
The first: hair touching an eyeball is not nothing. If your dog is squinting on one side, if an eye is watering or weeping more than the other, if they're pawing at their face or rubbing it down the couch, if there's redness or a discharge that's changed — that's a veterinary question and not a scissors question. A vet can actually look at the surface of the eye, which nobody can do from across the room.
The second: there's also a version of this that scissors genuinely cannot fix, because the hair is growing out of the eyelid itself rather than off the face. Those conditions get treated medically, sometimes surgically. If a groom keeps not solving the problem, that's a real clue and it's worth mentioning to your vet.
Option one: trim the face short
This is the most common choice among pet owners, and it's the lowest-maintenance one by a wide margin. The face hair gets scissored short and rounded so nothing hangs down into the eyes at all.
What's good about it: nothing falls where it shouldn't, there's no daily routine to keep up, and you can see your dog's eyes. That last one matters more than people expect — when the eyes are visible, you're the first to notice a change in tearing, a squint, or a weepy morning, instead of finding out weeks later.
The trade-offs: it grows back, and the awkward middle of the grow-out is the worst of both worlds — long enough to reach the eye, short enough to stand up and jab rather than lie flat. The American Kennel Club makes this point in its guidance for Shih Tzu owners: pet clips need maintaining, and the hair over the nose wants trimming regularly, because that hair can poke the dog in the eye and cause irritation. So a short face isn't a one-time fix, it's a shorter loop. And on a long-coated breed, it does change the look — a Shih Tzu in a short face reads like a different dog than one in full coat, and some owners love that and some miss the drama.
Option two: the topknot
The other traditional answer is to keep the length and get it up and out of the way. The AKC describes the topknot as the way the hair on a Shih Tzu's head is kept out of the eyes, and puts it plainly: to prevent eye irritation, the hair on top of the head should either be cut short or kept in a topknot. It's not decoration — it's doing a job.
What's good about it: you keep the coat. If you love the long look, or you're showing, or you just don't want to start over on years of grow-out, this is how you have both.
The trade-offs: it's daily work, and the AKC is direct about that too — the hair on top of the head needs combing daily, and the topknot itself should be taken out and redone rather than left sitting. A band left in too long, or put in too tight, is its own problem. And plenty of dogs have opinions. Some wear one happily forever; some will paw it out inside an hour, and a dog who is determined to remove their own topknot every day has essentially voted.
Option three: leave it
This gets treated as the lazy answer and it isn't always. Several breeds are traditionally kept with a fall of hair over the eyes, and plenty of those dogs go through life navigating perfectly well. Honestly, there isn't a tidy scientific answer on exactly how much a fringe blocks a dog's vision, and we're not going to invent one.
What's good about it: no maintenance, no grow-out phase, and no scissors near the face of a dog who finds that genuinely frightening. That last point is worth sitting with. For an anxious dog, face work is the hardest part of a groom, and “we left the face alone this time” is a legitimate outcome rather than a failure. Our post on grooming anxiety in dogs gets into the wider version of that.
The trade-offs: long face hair collects things. It wicks up water from the bowl, it holds food, it picks up whatever the dog just put their nose into, and it's the hair that ends up sitting in the corner of a weepy eye. If your dog already deals with staining, our guide to tear stains and what causes them covers why damp face hair and stained face hair tend to be the same conversation.
Why this comes up right now in St. Charles
Mid-August is peak season for this question here, for two reasons that happen to land at the same time.
One is the calendar. If your dog had a summer haircut in June, the face is now grown out to exactly the length where it reaches the eyes — long enough to be in the way, not long enough to sweep clear. That's a six-to-eight-week clock, and a lot of St. Charles dogs are hitting it this week.
The other is what's outside. Late summer is when Missouri grass has gone to seed, and seed heads sit at roughly dog-face height along trail edges, creek banks, and any lot nobody has mowed since July. A long fringe is a very effective collector of all of it. Most of what it catches is harmless and combs out; the exception is the barbed, one-directional stuff, which is why our guide to foxtails and grass awns in Missouri lists the eye as one of the places you least want one to end up. Add ragweed season starting up, mowing dust, and the humidity that keeps a face damp all afternoon, and August face hair is both the longest and the dirtiest it gets all year.
For what it's worth, this is one thing our own two never make us think about — Blue is a Dachshund and Belle is a Weimaraner, and neither one grows a hair anywhere near their eyes. It's the doodles, the Shih Tzu, the Maltese and the shaggy terriers who bring us this question, and it's a good one to bring.
If you want to handle it at home
Some owners do trim the face between appointments, and there's nothing wrong with that if your dog is easy about it. A few things worth being careful about: use blunt or round-tipped shears rather than pointed ones, never point the blades toward the eye, comb the hair up and away from the face first so you can see where skin ends and hair begins, and have a second person steadying the head if there is any doubt.
The honest limit: if your dog jerks their head when you touch their face, don't. The eye is millimeters away and there's no version of this worth an emergency vet visit. Leave that one for an appointment.
So — trim, tie, or leave?
All three are real answers, and the right one is the one you'll actually keep up with. A topknot you re-do every morning beats a short face you let grow into the eyes for three months. A short face you maintain beats a topknot that's been in since Tuesday. And leaving a nervous dog's face alone beats forcing scissors on a dog who's telling you no.
What we'd rather do than hand you a rule is look at the actual dog with you. Bring it up at drop-off and we'll tell you what we're seeing in that coat and on that face, and what your options look like from there — and if something around the eye looks like a health question rather than a haircut question, we'll say so and point you to your vet, who can examine it properly.
If you'd like a hand with it, book with us here in St. Charles — face work comes up naturally as part of a full groom. And if you're not sure how to describe the face you're picturing, our guide to asking for the dog haircut you actually want is the place to start.
Frequently asked questions
Should I cut the hair out of my dog's eyes?
It's genuinely your decision, and there are three workable answers: trim the face short, keep the length in a topknot, or leave it. The AKC's guidance for long-coated breeds like the Shih Tzu is that the hair on top of the head should either be cut short or kept in a topknot to prevent eye irritation. Leaving it is defensible too, particularly for a dog who is frightened of face work — but watch for squinting, watering, or pawing at the face, which change the answer.
Is hair in a dog's eyes actually bad for them?
It can be. Veterinary ophthalmology sources describe trichiasis — hair growing from a normal spot on the dog that ends up contacting the cornea — as common both in flat-faced breeds with nasal folds and in breeds that grow long hair around the eyes, and note that chronic contact can lead to lasting corneal changes including pigment and scarring. Plenty of dogs with a fringe have no trouble at all, though, which is why the signs matter more than the length.
What is a topknot, and does my dog need one?
It's the head hair gathered up and secured with a soft band so it can't fall into the eyes. It lets you keep a long coat without the hair sitting on the eye, which is why it's the traditional answer on breeds like the Shih Tzu. It's daily work — the hair needs combing out and the band redoing rather than being left in — and no dog needs one if the face is kept short instead.
Can I trim the hair around my dog's eyes at home?
Many owners do. Use blunt or round-tipped shears, never point the blades toward the eye, comb the hair away from the face first so you can see the skin, and get someone to steady the head. If your dog jerks their head when their face is touched, leave it for an appointment — the margin for error next to an eye is very small.
Which breeds get hair in their eyes the most?
Any breed with a continuously growing coat on the face: Shih Tzu, Lhasa Apso, Maltese, Havanese, Bichons, Poodles and doodles, Yorkies, Cocker Spaniels, and shaggy terriers. Flat-faced breeds are a separate case — the issue there is often hair from the nasal fold reaching the eye rather than a long fringe, and that one is a veterinary conversation rather than a haircut.
When is hair near my dog's eye a vet question instead of a grooming question?
Any time the eye itself is telling you something: squinting, an eye that waters or weeps more than the other, redness, a discharge that's changed, or a dog pawing and rubbing at their face. Some hair problems near the eye also come from hair growing out of the eyelid itself, which no amount of trimming reaches and which is treated medically. If grooming keeps not solving it, that's the signal to have your vet look.