Canine seizures

[Little Gifts]

I have a 9.5 year old stafford girl. Over the past few months we have had a couple of incidents of her waking during the night with shallow breathing, tremors and she is unable to be calmed or settled and just keeps walking/pacing/sitting (rather than lying). Each time I have thought she was in some kind of pain. It has quickly passed and she's settled and gone back to sleep. She is not a dog that shows pain or illness easily. She rarely vomits and has only really had one major health scare which resolved with treatment (can't remember the name of it now but it made her skin red, hard and swollen and was something to do with her red blood cells I think).

 

She had a much longer incident on Thursday morning so I took her into the vet as soon as possible that morning. Her temp was elevated and while there she had a similar incident but the vet wasn't available to see it (we were waiting on bloods). I was concerned she was having pancreatitis attacks as the tremors seemed to be from pain, but when I touched her body she didn't flinch in any particular location and her stomach was not tight. The bloods have ruled it out too. My vet thinks it is neurological and she is having seizures. More monitoring needs to be done to determine what testing should be done and then what treatment options might be appropriate. I know there can be a gamut or reasons why a dog might develop seizures but I am interested to hear of others experiences. I have previously had a dog with epilepsy and these turns are nothing like that.

 

Of other concern to me is that she is not the same since Thursday's seizures (if that's what they are). As an example she spent about 3 hours last night lying with her head under the lounge room stairs. No tail wag if I called her name or went and patted her. Just lying there with her eyes open like she was focused on something. She is usually quite social at night and lying on top of me for cuddles on the lounge and up and down if she hears something happening outside. She pretty much slept all Thursday (I had to leave her and work yesterday) and today she is still very quiet and lying in spots she doesn't normally (like on my bed rather than on her bed beside me while I'm at the computer). She's also lying with her legs under her rather than in her dead cockroach position or on her side with her legs splayed everywhere. I know an epileptic fit can take a lot out of a dog so do seizures do the same?

 

Also what tests did your dog have done to diagnose seizures and the cause behind them?

 

Thank you - I hate seeing her like this.

Edited March 4, 2017 by Little Gifts

[tdierikx]

Hypoglycaemic maybe? Blood sugar dropping...

 

How late does she have her evening meal, if any? Maybe feed her a small meal right before you all go to bed, and see if that helps any. Will at least rule out that option if the siezures continue, and it won't cost as much as more vet tests...

 

We had a little dog in boarding who had a hypo seizure due to not eating his evening meal... fussy little bugger just decided he didn't like the food he'd been eating happily for a week already... *sigh*... anyways, it took him a good 5 days to start acting his normal self and being chatty with us again. Note that the seizure he had was a pretty scary one for onlookers, and must have really knocked him about some. We had the luxury of making sure he had a selection of dinners overnight from that point, and no more siezures...

 

T.

[Papillon Kisses]

Malcolm had a seizure a few months back. I was told that with seizures they can look very different depending on each dog. Mal's presentation was apparently very unusual. He was first all stiff and tilted to one side, then flailing around in a sort of wavy way without the jerking one usually associates with fits. And he seemed more present than not.

 

I took him to the vet as soon as the flailing stopped and he was calmer, but still in a post-ictal state. He was still clearly feeling unwell and worried though.

 

The vet examined him and ruled out other causes such as that vestibular thing that causes dogs to tilt. A lot of the diagnosis was down to my description of the events but I recall that he shone a light in his eyes and one was dilated, and they also checked his eye tracking and responses to touch. I think there was something with his paws too, whether they righted themselves when turned over?

 

We kept him in the vet for a day so they could give him medication if he had another.  He was carrying on which is unusual for him but apparently mood changes can occur in the post-ictal state. He also remained tilted for a number of hours. So they had him propped up with my magic calming dressing gown. Not that it made much difference in the calming sense!

 

About a week later I had some bloods run but nothing unusual was found, and I was told that if something did pop up it could well be an anomaly anyway and not connected to the seizure.

 

We are just monitoring it at this stage. He has not had another. If they last for longer periods of time and occur more frequently together than we may get a full workup with a specialist (which would include an MRI) and/or start medications. But a work up would be very expensive for something that may happen once and never again or only a few times a year, and the medications they use can have worse side effects than the seizures themselves.

 

If it happens again I will record and time it while continuing to keep him safe from falls etc. The vet said that having video footage is very helpful.

 

Oh and yes it took a lot out of him. When I brought him home he was absolutely ravenous (another sign of it being a seizure) but I had strict instructions to only feed him small amounts at a time in case he seized again (I think they can choke on vomit or something?). He was also all worked up and wanted to play a lot, which for him is a stress response, but after that he had a HUGE sleep.

 

Another thing I was told to do was keep his life as stress free as possible as anxiety and stress is linked to seizures. Like that's possible with a dog with an anxiety disorder.

 

I don't know if this essay helps any. I guess tl/dr:

- seizures look different on all dogs

- record if possible while keeping dog safe from falls or choking

- post-ictal state can see behaviour/mood changes, appetite increase and sleepiness or lethargy. A huge amount of energy is used when fitting and blood glucose levels drop.

- unsure about work ups but they seem to range from simple neuro exam, blood test and monitoring to MRIs and whatever else specialist neurologists do.

[Little Gifts]

Funny you mention about Malcolm being hungry - I decided to offer Stussy breakfast because if her stomach was upset or she still had pain she wouldn't have been interested. But instead she wolfed it all down and licked the bowl and it was only her usual kibble! Same again last night. My vet was also the vet I used with my boy who had epilepsy. She gave Stussy a very thorough going over and did bloods but found no sign of pain or anything obvious that caused the seizure. She's also asked me to monitor her and video tape it if/when it happens again and to write down notes about it and what she ate and did in the hours before. She said we could do an ultrasound of the organs she can't feel and we could do a CT scan of her head to see if anything comes up but she didn't want to do that unless it was essential. Stussy is a pretty calm dog and has been keeping herself quiet since it all happened - no drop and rolls or zoomies. I'll be keeping it that way as much as possible.

 

Thank you for sharing your experiences PK. As I said, I had a boy with epilepsy and it was really challenging. Even though this is different I'm still really worried. I'm not in a good head space for Stussy to suddenly get old and sick on me.

[Little Gifts]

1 hour ago, tdierikx said:

Hypoglycaemic maybe? Blood sugar dropping...

 

How late does she have her evening meal, if any? Maybe feed her a small meal right before you all go to bed, and see if that helps any. Will at least rule out that option if the siezures continue, and it won't cost as much as more vet tests...

 

We had a little dog in boarding who had a hypo seizure due to not eating his evening meal... fussy little bugger just decided he didn't like the food he'd been eating happily for a week already... *sigh*... anyways, it took him a good 5 days to start acting his normal self and being chatty with us again. Note that the seizure he had was a pretty scary one for onlookers, and must have really knocked him about some. We had the luxury of making sure he had a selection of dinners overnight from that point, and no more siezures...

 

T.

T she had bloods done to check for anything and everything and nothing odd showed up. She has her evening meal around 5pm and we always check they have eaten the bulk of it. Late night snacks are always given (and factored into their overall diet) because Tempeh gets the vomits in the mornings if she gets over hungry (they are fed by 7am). Both dogs only eat until they are full and will leave food if they don't want anymore so I'm always mindful of late night hunger. We only feed them that early at night because of Tempeh deciding she might die if not fed by then!

 

[tdierikx]

Did Stussy eat her breakfast before you went to the vet? Possible that would have upped her blood sugar levels so that nothing showed up on the bloods... but would also have possibly negated another round of fitting too...

 

We used to have a tube of nutrigel handy for small breed pups when they were weaning, as the occasional pup would not get enough for whatever reason, and the sugar hit would definitely help stop the siezures... honey can do the trick too, but nutrigel is the bomb in cases like that.

 

The dog at work was 13... and it's not uncommon for older dogs to "suddenly" develop issues like diabetes. Also, as he had his fit in the morning before we feed breakfast, his bloods showed really low blood sugar as the cause. He had a full bowl of his dinner still uneaten. He spent 3 days at the vet getting further tests and recovering from his ordeal, and they ended up ruling out diabetes (thank dog)... so he just has to always have a selection of dinners to make sure he eats enough to not fit again... *sigh*... at least his owners were understanding about old dog issues and were happy for the vet to run all possible tests to get to the bottom of the problem.

 

T.

[Little Gifts]

Yes she had eaten all her breakfast (a slightly smaller one than usual as I wasn't expecting her to want to eat) but still had a smaller seizure at the vets about 2 hours after her breakfast. I'll definately keep this issue in mind. I have to document things like when and what she ate if/when she has her next one so the vet can see if there is a pattern.

 

The treats they get at night are usually chicken or lamb based and are supposedly natural but I'm going to check all the ingredients to see if there is anything of concern.

Edited March 5, 2017 by Little Gifts