About

Small White Dogs With Crusty Eyes or Small White Dog With Shit In Its Eyes refers to a series of memes about how small white dogs, notably Maltese or Shih Tzus, tend to develop a red or brown crusty substance around their eyes, typically made up of dried tears. The eye crust became the subject of memes online in mid-2020, many of the jokes claiming that rich white people tend to own the dogs and that the dogs are ugly, inspiring further memes over the following years.

Origin

Around June 2020, people began making jokes about how rich white people tend to own small white dogs with "crusty" eyes. As an early example, on June 12th, 2020, TikToker^[3] @mayafarhattt posted a video showcasing a now-deleted tweet, posted earlier that month, reading, "Every white girl with rich parents has that ugly ass white dog that has brown crust around its eyes." In the video, the TikToker shows off her dog, which has red around its eyes, gaining over 4 million views in two years (shown below).

Why Do Small White Dogs Get Crusty Eyes?

There are a variety of reasons that small white dog breeds get these stains. According to PetMD,^[2] the most common cause of the red-brown stains is dried tears, which contain a pigment called porphyrin that turns red or brown after prolonged air exposure. This can happen to all dog breeds with long hair around their eyes but is easier to spot on white dogs.

Spread

Jokes about tear staining on white dogs' eyes continued over the following years. On July 22nd, 2020, Twitter^[1] user @bjbjonez posted, "bitches always like 'isn’t my dog so cute?' but it’s a white dog with those crispy red eye stains," gaining over 469,000 likes and 43,000 retweets in just under two years (shown below).

On July 29h and August 4th, TikTokers^[5][6] @sawyermcd and @peepeepoopooemily posted videos making similar jokes about dogs with crusty eyes, gaining over 7.5 million and 978,000 views respectively in around two years (shown below, left and right). On August 7th, Junkee^[4] published an article about the memes.

On May 13th, 2021, The Catamount^[10] published an article "In Defense of Crusty White Dogs." On December 10th, 2021, Instagram^[7] user suckinonchilidog posted a meme using the phrase "small white dog with shit in its eyes," gaining over 2,100 likes in three months (shown below).

On March 4th, 2022, Instagram^[8] user boomer.jim posted a video referring to the dogs, gaining over 28,000 likes in three days (shown below).

On March 5th, Instagram^[9] user grapejuiceboys posted an Ain't No Way meme referencing the dogs, gaining over 95,000 likes in two days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References