Manhattan ? Dustin, a 4-year-old Bichon Frise, was running into things around the house. But it wasn’t until last December that Sherry Fleenor noticed something was really wrong, when she saw a white cloudiness in her dog’s left eye.

The diagnosis: A cataract.

The solution: Surgery.

The prognosis: Excellent.

As the success rates improve for animals — it’s about 95 percent for ideal candidates — more pet owners are turning to the elective surgery to remove cataracts, an opacity in the eye’s lens that can cause blurring and loss of vision.

It’s a growing field, and it has been buoyed by advances made on humans. The American College of Veterinary Ophthalmologists estimates there were about 15,000 surgeries performed in 2003 on pets for cataracts.

There has been a steady increase in the number of cases, said Dr. Harriet Davidson, who performs the surgeries at Kansas State University. She is one of 240 licensed veterinary ophthalmologists in the nation.

“People are becoming more aware of the surgery and wanting to do the best thing for their pets,” she said.

Those roughly 15,000 surgeries amounted to millions of dollars. Although there are no official figures, practicing veterinary ophthalmologists estimate the cost of surgeries ranges from $1,200 to $4,000. That is about $30 million a year spent nationally to clear up Rover’s eyesight.

Fleenor turned to Kansas State’s veterinary clinic for help with Dustin because the high costs of a private practice ophthalmologist, where she would have had to pay about $4,000 for the surgery, exams and care. At Kansas State, the cost was about $1,500.

So Fleenor decided to have the surgery for Dustin.

“He’s too young to go blind,” she said.

Most cataracts in animals are a result of genetics, complications from diabetes and trauma to the eye. Although dogs, especially purebreds, are the most likely to have cataracts, all animals, including fish, horses, cats and exotic species, can develop the eye problem.

Veterinary ophthalmologist Alan Brightman, left, examines a Siberian Husky for cataracts while a veternary student looks on at the Kansas State University veterinary hospital in Manhattan.

“Animals have all the diseases humans do,” said Dr. Dan Brogdon, a veterinary ophthalmologist in Jacksonville, Fla., and on the public relations committee of the ACVO.

Surgery is the only way to effectively treat a cataract.

But removing the cataract won’t ensure the animal can see, said Dr. Alan Brightman, an ophthalmologist surgeon at the Kansas State veterinary school.

So ophthalmologists perform a series of tests to determine whether the animal’s retinas are working and can enable the animal to see once the cataract is removed.

Because the animal can’t communicate in words, Brightman also will set up a maze for the animal to determine sight problems.

“For every 10 to 12 cataracts we look at, we operate on only two,” said Brightman, who performs about 100-150 cataract surgeries each year.

Veterinary ophthalmologists use the same equipment as human ophthalmologists. The surgery on an animal is similar to what a person would go through, except the animals are put under general anesthesia. And unlike people, an animal will have cataracts in both eyes removed at the same time.

It takes about an hour to remove the cataracts in an animal. Most ophthalmologists use phacoemulsification to remove the cataract. A tiny ultrasonic device is inserted into the animal’s eye, working to emulsify and break up the cataract. Another instrument is then inserted to suck up the excess liquid in the eye before the lens is removed. The eye is then stitched up and treated with anti-inflammatory medicine.

For Dustin, the Bichon Frise, it took less than 3 minutes in each eye to emulsify the cataract. The whole process took about 20 minutes for each eye, with time in between to flip the dog over so that Brightman could work on the dog’s other eye.

As with humans, artificial lenses are inserted in some animals to give a farther range of vision, but an animal can see without the lens. Labradors, retrievers and herding dogs need the lenses because they need the ranges to see, Brightman said.

In Dustin’s case, his owner decided that her dog didn’t need an artificial lens.

It will take about a month for the eye to fully heal after the surgery, Brightman said. Fleenor, and other owners whose animal undergo the surgery, will need to give eye drops several times a day to her pet to keep down inflammation, which could cause complications.

Only an hour after the surgery, Dustin was starting to wake up and respond. Brightman said it would take about two hours for the anesthesia to wear off.

“Soon as he’s up, he’ll be running down the hall,” he said.