Movement of the head can also be used to assist in depth perception. Although the area of binocular depth perception available to our dogs is smaller than that available to us, it is obvious to all of us with hunting retrievers that they can clearly judge distances very well. Visual acuity Visual acuity is the ability to see the details of an object separately and clearly. Postretinal processing has not been extensively studied in dogs, and was beyond the scope of the article being reviewed. If the image is focused in front of the retina, myopia, or nearsightedness, results, and if the image is focused behind the retina, hyperopia, or farsightedness, results.
Some dogs are myopic, or nearsighted.
Myopic dogs may have been removed from the program due to poorer performance, without an understanding of why they were performing poorly. This finding may have important implications for retriever breeds, indicating that poor marking skills may possibly be related to vision disturbances, and use of animals with poor marking skills in breeding programs may possibly propagate those vision problems. Other optical aberrations may occur within the eye, creating vision problems, such as astigmatism, spherical aberrations of the lens, and chromatic aberrations. The clinical importance of these conditions is unclear in dogs - they are either an uncommon finding or the canine eye may be able to accommodate for these problems. In addition, the normal eye is able to accommodate, or change focus, which allows normal vision of objects at different distances.