Hi all!
I’ll try to make this as brief as possible. Our sweet girl who we’ve had for almost two years had a stroke a few months ago at age 5. She “seemed” to recover for the most part with only slight side effects we noticed (like decreased stamina / endurance for exercise).
Fast forward to just this past week (almost exactly 3 months since the stroke), she has been getting super random bouts of severe anxiety. Panting to the point of hyperventilation, shaking, drooling - just overall intense fear. A few of the times this happened about 5 minutes before a thunderstorm started. But sometimes, it’s random with seemingly no cause.
Mind you, before the stroke literally nothing scared this dog, she was the most confident dog I’d ever known and could sleep through tornado-level thunderstorms. We’ve taken her to the vet and had a full work-up done only to find nothing. Even after the stroke they couldn’t find anything, they just told us this sometimes happens in greys.
I guess my question is - could new fears / anxiety develop after a stroke? Could it be something neurological that they won’t be able to test for?
We’re completely baffled as to what to do, we give her trazadone from our vet for the storms and events that cause panic, but it seems that she may benefit from something she could take daily since she seems to be in a constant state of anxiety almost all the time. Our hearts breaks for her because she’s not the same dog she was before the stroke, and to watch her suffer through these random panic attacks is really hard.
If anyone has any advice / words of comfort they could offer, we would greatly appreciate it! Thank you!