Seizure

[Guest Eileen]

I have a greyhound, for almost 4 years now. He will be 8 in May. He's been having, what I think, are little "mini-seizures" for about a month or so. This morning around 5 am he had a full blown seizure, that lasted a good 2 minutes or more. It always seems to happen either in the middle of the night or very early in the morning. Before this big one, he would just get out of bed and stumble around the hall way and by the time I'd get out of bed he'd be fine again. I used to be a vet tech and in the back of my mind I was thinking seizures. My vet, who I worked for for 15 years and trust, said to do nothing, which I expected he would say. I know he doesn't rush to medicate, but this morning, was a bad one, and he still said to wait, which I also expected, to see if he had another full blown seizure. At that time he would do a full work up on him.

 

He is thinking something other than eplispy because of his age, as I did. My question to you guys is, is this a common thing in greys? Any ideas or suggestions on what to do?

 

He's fine now, and was ok after about 45 minutes, ate breakfast like normal (the day he doesn't eat is the day I know he's really sick) and he's been fine all morning, just wanted some opinions.

 

Thanks.

[grey14me]

I don't think it's common...and with the frequency and intensity changing, I'm not sure why you would wait to do a full workup. I'd get things started and I'd also start keeping a diary of timing/severity of each one...

 

I wanted to add...8 is not old, so I'm not sure what kind of age thing it could be...

[LBass]

Eileen, I'm going to point you to a couple of really great websites for canine seizures. I think you will find information there that will help you decide how to approach this. I certainly can understand holding off on starting anti-epileptic drugs. I don't see any real sense in holding off doing a good general physical, which should give your vet a pretty good idea if there is anything going on with your dog that might be triggering seizures--other than plain old fashioned epilepsy. Epilepsy is actually not that uncommon in dogs.

 

Causes & Treatments--an overview

 

www.canine-epilepsy-guardian-angels.com

 

www.canine-epilepsy.com

 

www.canine-epilepsy.net

 

Best wishes,

 

Lucy and epi Piper (2 weeks seizure free)

Edited January 29, 2009 by LBass

[Guest EmilyAnne]

Not all epilepsy cases need to be treated with drugs. My Henry is my second dog to have epilepsy. My epi-dog before him had epilepsy for 11 years, and was never ever medicated for it, and his epilepsy never worsened. Henry on the other hand, his seizures were too severe, and too close together, and so a pattern was created in the brain causing more and more seizures to become closer and closer together and more severe, until finally he went into a life threatening cluster in which he had to be kept on Valum for 3 days to break. At this time, Henry was started on Phenobarbital (116 days ago). He has been grand-mal free since then. I know I waited too long and should have started the drugs sooner.

 

I put all my experience so far into a blog, in hopes that it may help others do detective work in trying to figure out their dogs epilepsy. No two epilepsy cases are exzactly alike, and it really helps to hear the experiences of a broad range of epi-dogs. Link to my blog is at the bottom of my signature.

 

The general guideline is if your dog has more than one grand-mal a month, you should medicate. I think also severity of seizures should be considered, and also if the seizures are getting closer and closer together, that indicates a bad pattern is being set in the brain.

 

Please make sure you read this link~

http://healthyhoundz.blogspot.com/search/label/Ice-Pack

 

Also~

 

http://healthyhoundz.blogspot.com/search/l.../EPIL-K9%20List

[TheFullHouse]

You are correct in thinking this is uncommon at your pups age. Most dogs who develop epilepsy as you probably know do so between the ages of 3 and 5 years. I would look to see if there is a medical condition causing the seizures if he were my pup.

[greypuppyluv]

You may also want to do a search here in Health & Medical for "seizure".....there have been several threads devoted to this topic recently as some of our greyhounds have started having seizures lately. My Phaelin is one of them (his started when he was 6 1/2). My vet only started doing tests on him after he had his second confirmed grand mal seizure. He is on meds (sodium bromide) and we're still working on getting his dosage right.

 

Good luck with your boy.

[greysmom]

More than one grand mal a month or a lesser seizure every week. That's the guideline that the neuro told us about Libby. She had seizures every 6-8 weeks for many years before they started to cluster. We put her on phenobarbital and that seemed to do the trick.

 

Start with a full physical though just to rule out anything else. It's not easy to find a definitive diagnosis for seizures. Most often I think they're just called "idiopathic" seizures which basically means seizures of an unknown origin. Keep a log of every attack - date, time, duration, physical manifestations, behavior before and after.

 

Good luck

greysmom