Seizure Meds

[greyinmaine]

Nike has been started on Phenobarbitol for her seizures. I gave her the first dose at 7pm last night and when I went to take her out at 9 she was stumbling and would have fallen down the stairs if I hadn't been holding her collar. This morning she got her second dose and seems to be fine- alert and "normal" in her actions. What have any of you experienced? Are your dogs abilities or personalities changed by the medication? Do you think it was just that it was the first dose, or that she was sound asleep last night? Thank you for any input, this is my first experience with seizures.

[LBass]

Piper has been taking Phenobarbital (160 mg) twice a day for his seizures. He takes Potassium Bromide as well. One of the typical side effects of Phenobarbital is that it can make dogs a bit clumsy (ataxia) and weak in the rear end. It also often increases the amount that dogs drink and thus pee out and can make them quite ravenous so you may also need to watch for unusual chewing activity as you see how Pb is going to affect your dog.

 

Sometimes, after a couple of weeks the dog's body adjusts and adapts to the medication and problem side effects my decrease a bit. I noticed that when we were still increasing Piper's meds, looking for the optimal dose for him, that he had an adjustment period of a couple of week or more with each dosage increase.

 

For Piper, I've found a bit of wobbliness is a price we have to pay for decent seizure control.

 

Since you are new to dealing with seizures, I'll post my favorite links to excellent seizure info and support:

 

 

http://www.canine-epilepsy-guardian-angels.com/

 

http://www.canine-epilepsy.com/ This site also hosts a great email list for owners of epileptic dogs

 

Good luck in managing your hound's seizures.

 

 

--Lucy

[Jester]

Pheno will do that. It will also cause excessive drinking/peeing. The goal is to get the dog on the lowest dose possible to keep the seizures under control while minimizing side-effects. You may also want to consider Potassium Bromide. None of those side-effects but it is more expensive so most vets don't start with it.

[Guest CampWhippet]

We have a 20lb whippet on pheno. She get 30mg at 6 am, 30mg at 2pm and 60mg at 10pm and does fine. She used to get 60mg in the AM too but was wasted so I cut it to 30 and added the other 30mg 8 hours later.

 

She used to get a lot less but the siezure became more frequent so the dose was increased. Your dog will build up a tolerence to it.

[greypuppyluv]

Piper has been taking Phenobarbital (160 mg) twice a day for his seizures. He takes Potassium Bromide as well. One of the typical side effects of Phenobarbital is that it can make dogs a bit clumsy (ataxia) and weak in the rear end. It also often increases the amount that dogs drink and thus pee out and can make them quite ravenous so you may also need to watch for unusual chewing activity as you see how Pb is going to affect your dog.

 

Sometimes, after a couple of weeks the dog's body adjusts and adapts to the medication and problem side effects my decrease a bit. I noticed that when we were still increasing Piper's meds, looking for the optimal dose for him, that he had an adjustment period of a couple of week or more with each dosage increase.

 

For Piper, I've found a bit of wobbliness is a price we have to pay for decent seizure control.

 

Since you are new to dealing with seizures, I'll post my favorite links to excellent seizure info and support:

 

 

http://www.canine-ep...ian-angels.com/

 

http://www.canine-epilepsy.com/ This site also hosts a great email list for owners of epileptic dogs

 

Good luck in managing your hound's seizures.

 

 

--Lucy

 

Phaelin is on Pheno twice a day and sodium bromide (very similar to potassium bromide) and as Lucy said, the pheno can make them very unstable and wobbly until their body gets used to the medication. You might still notice some weakness or slow coordination and that may never change, but hopefully the pheno is helping to reduce/prevent the occurance of the seizures. Also, make sure your vet has you keeping up on blood tests to monitor Nike's liver. Pheno is a helpful drug but it needs to be monitored so his liver doesn't get damaged.

 

I second the email list from Lucy's second link. It's a great resource and sounding board where you can get tons of good information you won't find listed on websites.

[Guest zombrie]

Yes, Pheno can do that to them. Manny was on it for a short time to stop a clustering bout, and it made him very wobbly and unbalanced.

Edited April 19, 2011 by zombrie

[TheFullHouse]

Yep, you'll have a drunk doggie for a while until the body adjusts to the medication. Also any time you have to adjust the meds up, these symptoms can occur again but again the body will adjust and your pup will be fine.

[GreyWrangler]

Yep, you'll have a drunk doggie for a while until the body adjusts to the medication. Also any time you have to adjust the meds up, these symptoms can occur again but again the body will adjust and your pup will be fine.

 

Yup what she said.

 

I had a pheno boy for 6 years. His main side effect of the drug was not the drinking?peeing, but the hunger. He was always hungry, and counter surfed a lot of stuff.

 

We tried adding the K bromide, but he had such long lasting ataxia i took him off of it.

He passed 3 month later due to hemagiosarcoma, at 11.5 yrs.

[greyinmaine]

Thank you all so much for the advice and the websites. There is so much to learn. Nike is taking 60mg twice a day right now and is scheduled for bloodwork in 3 weeks to check her levels and liver function. My concern is that her seizures seem to occur during the day and I have no idea if she is having seizures while I am at work. She doesn't urinate or drool or do anything that would leave evidence that she had a seizure if I wasn't home to witness it. I'm worried that I will never know if they are being controlled or I'm just not seeing them. She seems to "snap out of it" fairly quickly after an episode. Any thoughts?

[TheFullHouse]

The medication should give her some measure of control, or at least lesson the number of seizures she's having. If her levels are too low, at some point you'll witness another seizure and can go from there. The other option you have is to set up a webcam where you can check on her during the day to see if she's continuing to have seizures.

 

You could also set up a camera and video tape her during the day and review the tapes at night to see if she's continuing to have seizures during the day while you're at work.

 

Also, it's not uncommon for greyhounds who suffer from seizures to develop a pattern to the seizures so that they typically have them at the same time during the day. My Saint would typically have his between 10:00 - 11:00 at night so we were always home. If you see she's seizing, keep a log and check the times, you may see she's close to the same time of day each time.

[GreyWrangler]

Red had the majority of his seizures around 3 am or 3 pm. right out of his sleep or a nap. He'd wake and try to run, most nights I would be awakened by something, who knows why, and be in time to catch him from flying off the bed and into the wall or behind a chair.

[KF_in_Georgia]

When Nike has seizures, is she vocal? If so, try a voice-activated tape recorder. You leave it running, but it records nothing if she's not making noise. You can check the recorder when you get home. (I used to use one to see if a foster dog was barking or whining or otherwise vocalizing with SA when I wasn't home.)

[greypuppyluv]

Also, it's not uncommon for greyhounds who suffer from seizures to develop a pattern to the seizures so that they typically have them at the same time during the day. My Saint would typically have his between 10:00 - 11:00 at night so we were always home. If you see she's seizing, keep a log and check the times, you may see she's close to the same time of day each time.

 

Phaelin's seizures are always in the morning as I'm waking up.....around 6:30am. He has one about every 2 months. I keep an Excel worksheet of his seizures with dates, times, length, etc and I give an updated copy of it to Phaelin's vet and neuro whenever we see them. A list member from the EPIL-K9 list sent me theirs, so if you'd like a copy, let me know and I'll forward hers on to you.

[HoundHeavenAZ]

Chip takes 65 mg phenobarbital morning and night, 1250 mg sodium bromide each morning and 300 mg of fluconazole twice daily. He's gone as long as 95 days without seizing and as short as 38 days since he bounced and came to us last fall. Prior to that he sometimes seized weekly.

I can tell when his pheno is wearing off as he starts to NOT stumble for a change! He's such a goober - big and dumb and as sweet as can be. His seizures have been no more than 1-2 minutes and it sometimes takes about 10 minutes for him to remember who he is and who I am. I have sensed some fear when he comes out of a seizure so I just sit calmly nearby and speak low and soft until he starts to recognize his surroundings. I never touch him because he startled in his previous home and I don't want to scare him or invoke a fear response. He would never knowingly hurt me, but when he's still zoned out he might.

 

We limit his food Natural Balance venison and sweet potato and fresh veggies meat. I found that the high fat burger is the best for making meatballs to stick the pills into. He just opens up like a baby bird and gobbles them right down. I don't think he's ever bit into one he just swallows it whole

 

He does drink a lot and you can see his legs actually get tired when he pees forever and ever. He is weak in the hind end and I sometimes feel like I'm dragging a car behind me when we go on walks. He likes to drift into the middle of the road too. Such a goober

 

We do get his liver checked and recently tested to see if we were at a therapeutic level for the bromide. We were at 1000 mg but found we needed to boost it a bit.

 

Good luck with your baby Nike, I'm really sorry to hear that you and she are going through this too.

[RaineysMom]

Thank you all so much for the advice and the websites. There is so much to learn. Nike is taking 60mg twice a day right now and is scheduled for bloodwork in 3 weeks to check her levels and liver function. My concern is that her seizures seem to occur during the day and I have no idea if she is having seizures while I am at work. She doesn't urinate or drool or do anything that would leave evidence that she had a seizure if I wasn't home to witness it. I'm worried that I will never know if they are being controlled or I'm just not seeing them. She seems to "snap out of it" fairly quickly after an episode. Any thoughts?

 

first of all, very sorry you are going through this. We just let our Rainey go after a 7 month battle with seizures (but with some unknown underlying cause -- she was 10.5). She was on the exact same level of pheno Nike is on and had some stumbling for the first few days -- that got better, but she continued to have some hind end weakness and coordination problems here and there. Our biggest problem with it was the ravenous side effect -- whatever was going on with her brain (neurologist highly suspected athropying, no tumor was found on MRI on 10/4/10) exacerbated that behaivor to a point of her almost being insane -- and never got better like most do. (her issues were due to the brain thing, not normal seizures like Nike is most likely having!).

 

as far as knowing during the day, we wondered too. Rainey DID have some drooling (only urinated the very first seizure and never after) but there were a few times I was pretty sure she had one while I was at work. She'd just be acting more 'off' when I got home, more agitated, just "off". The neuro said that if you have a gut feeling she HAD one, she probably did. Never got a web cam or video cam set up so we'll never know.

 

hugs to you both -- there are TONS of seizure dogs that do super well on the meds and I'm sure Nike will be one of them!

[greyinmaine]

Nike has been on her meds for 3 days now and it seems to be going well- no side effects at all since the first dose. She may be drinking slightly more water but as far as food- what is more often than always wanting to eat? I have kept a log since her first seizure and they have, with the exception of one, all been in the morning. This is what makes me suspicious that there have been others that I haven't seen. Unfortunately I have no web cam (and could not monitor her from work) and she is not vocal during the seizures. I am happy to see that she seems unconcerned by the meds and is as happy and goofy as ever. Hopefully they can be controlled and she won't have any damaging side effects. It is such a comfort for me to have this site to come to for information and good wishes!

[Guest LindsaySF]

It's normal. It should go away as your dog adjusts to the Pheno.

 

 

Pheno will do that. It will also cause excessive drinking/peeing. The goal is to get the dog on the lowest dose possible to keep the seizures under control while minimizing side-effects. You may also want to consider Potassium Bromide. None of those side-effects but it is more expensive so most vets don't start with it.

KBr can cause ataxia and excessive drinking/peeing just like Pheno can.

[Fruitycake]

I hope that your Nike has the good luck to be controlled as well as Monty has been on pheno. When Monty went on the pheno he had the clumsiness...but that was also after many seizures in one day (at least 5, we think it was 6 with one the day before the first one we noticed - when we were at work). After all of those seizures he also seemed to have had his hard drive reformatted and we got a whole new dog. So we got to start from scratch with him again (potty training, walking on leash, stairs, going potty on a leash, what cats were...).

 

He's a little goofier now, and maybe more clumsy, but it's hard to remember exactly how clumsy he was since it was over 3.5 years ago that he went on his pheno after those seizures. He's completely controlled now, thank goodness!

[Guest snakes]

We never did pheno for my boy, by my choice. I had him on Potassium bromide for awhile but due to sever GI problems I took him off that. Successfully used homeopathic remedies and rescue remedy that controlled the seizures, his anxiety would always creep up as "seizure time" got closer. I learned the signals quickly and we got it to 2-3 seizures (much midler) per month.

Lately due to osteo pain he has been on neurontin (originally a seizure control med) and hasn't had a seizure in 4 months! This is a very easy med to give (i put the capsules directly in the food) and doesn't really have any side effects.

Good luck!

[LBass]

I had such a hard time dealing with the idea that Piper could be having seizures when I was at work and I might never know and that I wouldn't be there for him if he clustered or got in trouble somehow. I still worry about that, but I finally just came to grips with the fact that I have to work and I can't bring him with me so I just have to find some measure of "trust in the universe" that he is going to be OK. For me, that has been one of the hardest part of managing Piper's seizures.

 

I wish I had a solution for that tough issue but I don't. When he is clustering--and that has not happened in nearly 2 years--I stay with him. When he clusters he usually has a seizure about every 3 hours for 36-48 hours. Grueling, draining and horrible for both of us.

 

Wishing you all the best in managing your girl's seizures. It is true that the vast majority of dogs with seizures manage the meds well, get decent seizures control from them, and live normal long happy lives. Your Nike and my Piper are going to be those nice average dogs.

 

--Lucy