(From left) Emily Pluhar, Renata Ramos, Stephanie Roach-Riggins and Kaylin Shelton with Ziggy the beagle in ophthalmology at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital. Ziggy presented to the Veterinary Teaching Hospital with a unique case of uveodermatological syndrome, a syndrome typically found in Arctic dog breeds. Credit: Madison Brown for Virginia Tech.

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.

He had only one eye left to lose.

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.…