Greyhound Seizures?

[Guest Norzy]

Hello all!

 

I think my grey just a seizure today, the first we've ever witnessed! It was terrifying! I'm taking him to the vet in two days (due to work). In the meanwhile, I wanted some information on this from all you veteran greyhound owners out there. I did do some internet research on this but I trust the advice I get from the GreyTalk more!

 

Is it common for greyhounds to have seizure disorder? How is it usually treated? Can anything be done, like in lifestyle changes, to decrease/avoid episodes? What is the best thing to do when you find them seizing? Are there foods that can lead to seizure (obviously poisons can, but foods that you're not supposed to feed like chocolate or garlic)? Please sure anything else you can think of that is pertinent.

 

I appreciate your wisdom very much!

Nora

[jamngrey]

I'm sure others will chime in soon. There are several greys on here that have wonderful lives. Good luck

[Nichole]

My group has an article about seizures in their most recent newsletter. Go to www.greyhoundwelfare.org and select newsletter. It's in the Spring 2012 issue.

[heartdogs]

Judy (Jillysfullhouse) is the seizure guru & very helpful. I've had dogs of different breeds that have seizures, now have a whippet that seizes & Judy has given me several tips to use for Noelle.First of all a vet visit is a must & keep a journal of when,where, how long the seizure lasts to look for patterns. There is a good yahoo group for people with dogs who have seizures as well as other sites with good information. The first time you see a dog having a seizure but remember the dog does not know what it happening, can't hear you or see you, this is why they are so confused as they come out of the seizure. If Noelle has a grand mall (GM) she can be very restless & pace looking in every room & all over the yard. She also often pants hard for a while until her system gets back to normal. Seizures can & do happen to dogs of all breeds. Remember, try to remain calm & good luck. You can PM me if you want to discuss this more.

[TheFullHouse]

The first thing to remember is to try and remain calm. Seizures look awful to the bystander but your hound is in no pain. When having what they used to call grand mal seizures your senses shut down. Your dog can't see, hear, feel, taste or smell anything. The brain is basically having a short circuit so nothing is working properly. The important thing to know is that you can't do anything to bring the pup out of it and after making sure that he is in a safe place where he can't bump into anything or hit his head, stand back until he starts coming out of it and is on his feet. Dogs have bitten because of confusion while coming out of a seizure.

 

Once he is aware of his surroundings again, give him something with sugar in it, peanut butter or ice cream even syrup will work. Just a tablespoon because his sugar levels drop dramatically during a seizure and this will help him come out of it quicker. Make sure he has water because he may be very thirsty. He may want to pant and pace a bit, it's his way of bringing his temperature back to normal because it rises during a seizure.

 

Keep a log of date, duration, time of day and anything you can remember. If you can get a video of it to show your vet, even better.

 

If no medical reason is found for your boys seizures a diagnosis of idiopathic epilepsy will be given, in other word seizures with no known cause. Drugs can control seizures. There are several used with the most common being phenobarbital and potassium bromide. Your vet may treat your boy or send you to a neurologist. Most vets can and do treat seizures successfully every day.

 

I know this is a lot of information to throw at you all at once. There is a website that is great for more information and I'm sure someone will post it. I don't happen to have it bookmarked on my Ipad. Wishing you the best for your boy. Let us know how things go. Once you have posted 50 time you can use the PM function and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

[Guest Norzy]

Thank you for all the responses! I just have one more really important question: can having a seizure disorder or epilepsy shorten a pup's life? That's all I really care about!

[Wonder]

How old is your pup?

[LBass]

These are the web sites that were most helpful to me when Piper's seizures started:

 

http://www.canine-epilepsy.com

http://www.canine-epilepsy.net

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

 

 

There are many different possible causes for seizures in dog. Some of those underlying conditions can shorten a dogs life. The good news is that "garden variety" idiopathic epilepsy is usually a very treatable, manageable condition. I've never seen any indication that greyhounds are any more prone to seizures than any other breed.

 

I remember how frightening Piper's first seizure was for me, so for you.

Edited July 6, 2012 by LBass

[TheFullHouse]

My Saint started having seizures at the age of 3 and lived 7 years with his seizures controlled with meds. He passed away just before he turned 11 of something totally unrelated to his seizures.

[MaryJane]

Thank you for all the responses! I just have one more really important question: can having a seizure disorder or epilepsy shorten a pup's life? That's all I really care about!

 

There is a very slight possibility that a dog can go into "clusters" which is more than 1 seizure over a period of 24 hours and sometimes you can have then right after another and that can be life threatening. That is not the usual case, most dogs with seizures can live a relatively trouble-free life unless the seizures are caused by a brain tumor or something similar that is likely to grow worse over time. My Lucy is a pretty happy dog but she does have some space issues which might be related to "knowing she is a little different" and wanting to make sure the other dogs give her room.

 

It seems that most neurologists do not start to treat until you are having seizures once a month. And, you do want to go to a neurologist rather than having your regular vet do the treatments. Some dogs will have one seizure and never have another. If there is another seizure, make an appointment to the neurologist (can take up to 2 months to get in to see one). The neurologist should also give you information on how to treat this at home so that you hardly ever end up in the ER - for example, they can give you rectal valium that you would use if a seizure last more than 5 or so minutes (they'll give you specifics). The only problem will seeing a neurologist is some will insist on having an MRI and spinal tap to rule out other issues but, there are others that don't find that necessary to start treatment - find one that fits your budget and needs.

 

My Lucy was started on medicine when she was having a seizure about every 5 weeks but, the times were really decreasing between the seizures so it was a question of when we would start the medicine and not "if".

 

With Lucy's seizures which are GMs, they typically last less than 1 minute and I can hold her (I wrap her in a blanket) and that seems to lessen how severe and how long the seizure is BUT, I would not recommend that you do it - they can get pretty violent during the seizure and getting bitten or severely scratched is not uncommon. I give Lucy about 2 tablespoons of vanilla ice cream afterwards and that also seems to lesson the "after phase". During the seizure the glucose is used up quickly in the brain and the body will produce more but, there could be an imbalance for a short time so ... the ice cream helps - you don't want to give too much or too little. Dogs also get very hot during a seizure and sometimes you might need to cool them down. Some people say that during the seizure the dogs don't know what is going on - that may be true but, the dogs know that something has happened and is not quite right with them. Once Lucy came flying out of a room that she was in to get to me because she was starting to have her seizure.

 

Lucy is on Zonisamide and she handles it well. There are various medicines that are available today and the neurologist will be more familiar with them which is why I recommend seeing the specialist.

 

If you have other dogs, it's very important that they all be muzzled when you leave the house - the other dogs could attack (and kill) the seizing dog.

 

We had almost 5 months between Lucy's first seizure in March 2011 and the second seizure in August 2011 but, then her next one was in September. We are now almost 8 weeks seizure free.

 

Also, many people and dogs have one seizure and never have another one. As someone stated, it's very important to start a journal of the date and time of the seizure, how long it lasted, whether there was incontinence, and how the after-phase was.

 

Good luck.

[Guest cristaron]

Our boy started having seizures just after he turned two. He'll be eleven in October, so yes, they can live a long life.

He's a clusterer and never has just one seizure. It's always more. So far I've always been here when he starts and am

able to administer that extra phenobarbital the minute he starts. So far this has curbed it but I do have nasal diazapam

on hand just in case we have to use that if the pheno doesn't kick in fast enough.

[Fruitycake]

Our Monty was retired while training at 18 months old because of "seizures" (but we never got more specific information than that - not number, type, duration or severity) so we read up on it and did lots of research before we brought him home. We had a "wait and see" situation because we didn't know anything about what exactly happened and had hoped that it was just a fluke or something specific (training in the heat, something stressed him out, it was just a single incident and wouldn't happen again...). But about 4 months later he had 5 (or 6) seizures in 24 hours. I'm not sure on the number because he could have had one while we were at work - he messed in his kennel which he hadn't done for months, and the pad was all shoved to one side. The first one we witnessed was 3 AM the next morning, the second was 7 AM (at this point I was already at work and my husband witnessed it), the third was around noon (at 8AM my husband contacted the vet but the appointment was only available at 4 PM, so my husband stayed home with him) and his fourth was at 3:45 (we were late to the appointment because he was still "drunk" from it) and the vet got us phenobarbitol for him. He had another at 8 that night, and that's the last one he's had. He is well controlled on his phenobarbitol, but the blood tests every 6 months for liver function and every year for blood Pheno levels is kinda pricey. Thank goodness the meds themselves are cheap!

 

He is a really good dog, and while it took him a while to get beyond the inital clumsiness and drunken behavior when he first went on it he's perfectly healthy and active now. I'm glad his meds worked, and I am also glad for the wealth of info here and on the websites mentioned above. When we were asked if we would accept a medical needs dog with potential seizures I did a lot of research before we decided we could do what it would take if it were a worst case scenario.

 

[Oh, and one thing that intrigues me is that from his litter there was only one of the 6 pups that actually made it to racing. I wonder if any of the others in that litter also had seizures and were retired early...]

 

Good luck with him and I hope your situation is as good as ours turned out to be!

[greysmom]

Most dogs live long and happy lives with seizures. If this is his first one it's easy to freak out. They are very scary looking from the outside and you want to jump in and never let another one happen. Most vets will not treat seizures with medication until they are happening closer than 6 weeks time, unless there is clustering.

 

As Judy said, keep an exact log - date, time, seizure activity (length, actions), how long to recover. It's helpful for vets to see the pattern of seizures. I also added in activity and stress level, and what my girl ate, just to see if there was a correlation (in our case there wasn't).

 

Phenobarbitol and Potassium Bromide are the most common drugs used to treat seizures in dogs, though Zonisamide is rcently becoming popular and is very effective.

 

Good luck!

[RaineysMom]

our Rainey started having seizures in 2010 at just a few weeks shy of her 10th birthday. We let her go in March of 2011 as whatever was causing the seizures was doing very, very bad things to her brain she just got worse and worse and we never were able to fully control them.

 

one thing I read (somewhere) was that an ice pack, placed on the back during a seizure, lessens them. We were able to do that almost every time since 100% of her seizures occured while eating or within 60 seconds of eating, so we would just pull it out of the freezer right before she ate. Here's the info on it: http://www.canine-epilepsy-guardian-angels.com/icepack.htm

 

so very sorry your baby is going through this. Seizures SUCK SUCK SUCK.

[Guest CFPWonder]

Our girl, Wonder, just recently had a seizure in the middle of the night. It WAS terrifying - we called the E-vet and they guided us through it. She seized, seemed to come out of it and seized again. It broke our hearts. We took her to the vet the next day and she was put on 9 cc's of potassium bromide for 5 days and starting today she's down to 5 cc's once a day. Someone mentioned an ice pack - a friend of ours told us about it, too, and I just wondered if anyone else has tried it.

It was such a helpless feeling and I'm just trying to read things to see what to do during or after it happens again.

[Guest LindsaySF]

Some dogs have one seizure and never have another one, some dogs have seizures controlled with medication, some dogs outgrow their seizures, and some dogs die from their seizures. There is a broad spectrum of severity.

 

Your vet might want to run tests to check for a cause, the most common being a thyroid test (get the full thyroid panel, not just T4), and maybe a tick panel. Poisons and high body temp can also cause seizures, as well as various other metabolic disorders, infections, etc. If it's just one seizure the vet usually follows a "wait and see" approach. If the seizures continue, the vet will add medication (phenobarbital usually). If your girl has more than one seizure in 24 hours, you should get some rectal valium on hand to prevent clustering.

 

My girl Sophie has epilepsy. She seizes about every 2 weeks, sometimes once a month. She's on Phenobarbital, Potassium bromide, Zonisamide, and Keppra. I brought her to a neurologist when her regular vet was out of her element, and we couldn't increase the Pheno or KBr any higher. The neuro added the Zonisamide and Keppra.

 

My favorite seizure website is this one: http://www.canine-ep...om/site_map.htm

 

You can also join the canine epilepsy email list: http://www.canine-ep.../subscribe.html

 

If you have any questions feel free to PM me. Good luck at the vet!

 

 

 

~Lindsay~

[Guest CFPWonder]

Thanks for posting the link. There is so much information out there it's a bit overwhelming.

She hasn't had seizure since early Monday a.m. I am a little concerned, though, that going from 9cc's of potassium bromide twice a day down to 5cc's once a day is a drastic drop. Or is this normal when they do the loading doses. Our girl is only 4 and has other issues, too. When we adopted her a year ago she had to have her cecum (like people's appendix) removed - a major surgery. Took a long time to find the right food combination to firm up her stools. And then in April we found out she has lupus, although that's under control with vitamin supplements. And now this. We feel so bad for her.

The last 2 nights (like 1:30 a.m.) she has had a lot of gagging and coughing - don't know what that's about.

By the way, I'm new at this - how do I PM someone? Thanks, everyone, for the helpful info.

[TheFullHouse]

You have to have 50 posts to be able to PM on the board. She may be hungry in the middle of the night which may be causing the gagging. Poor girl, she has had a lot of problems. Your vet probably gave her a loading dose of Potassium Bromide and has now dropped it down. The good thing is if she starts seizing again you can push the dose back up to try and control them.

[Guest CFPWonder]

Thanks for the info. I'm new so it will be awhile before I have 50 posts.

I didn't realize that the gagging could be a sign of hunger. Learn something new everyday.

She's a big girl - just under 90 lbs. For the most part she has a good appetite, but we're trying to not let her gain any more weight - although she's just big and doesn't look fat. Maybe we'll try giving her a little something to eat next time it happens.

[TheFullHouse]

Just a small dog cookie will do her until morning. My pups all get a small dog cookie at bedtime so we don't have any gagging from hunger before breakfast.