Dog seizures

[mrswineo]

Hi all - I'm new to posting on this board, but I wanted to see if anyone had any experience/dealt with their older dog(s) having seizures.  Background:  he's about 10 years old (we adopted him 7 years ago), mixed poodle and he just started having seizures last June.  The vet told us that we could spend $2k to see a specialist in MD, but we can't afford this.  More than likely, I believe he has a brain tumor.  I guess I'm looking to see if anyone else has gone through this.  Thanks!!

[cmeon]

Hi- I'm sorry that this experience brought you here.

My only experience with canine seizures was with a foster dog (7yo dachshund), 8 years ago- and his only lasted a single weekend (he had a natural death years later). We do know that he was a very, very unhealthy dog when we picked him up- his senile owner fed him half a pack of Oreos DAILY, he was so overweight that his belly had rugburn from dragging across the floor. His seizures happened his very first weekend with us, and that first one (a full Grand Mal) was absolutely horrible. I seriously thought he was dead. He had two smaller seizures later that weekend (one at the vet's office)- but, we never found out what caused them.

Is your dog on any medication for his seizures? Are you noticing any pattern to them? What lead you to the brain tumor theory? I'm very sorry you're going through this with him, it has to be so hard to watch a pet you love go through seizures (I barely knew Schnitzel when he had his and I still remember that first one so clearly and my stomach knots up).

[Deleted]

My in-laws adopted a dog years ago at age 2, and at first she had seizures every few weeks. They were fairly mild as far as seizures go. Over time they became less and less frequent until she went 6-7 years without any seizures at all. Finally at age 13 she had numerous bad ones in one day, and they had to put her to sleep. All this to say, it's possible for a condition like this to mysteriously appear and disappear.

[mrswineo]

Thanks, ladies. I feel like I need a vet degree some days to understand the dr. He is on a med - phenobarbatol. 32 mg, 2x day. Our vet said that its very unlikely for a dog to start this late in life with random seizures without an underlying cause, which lead me to the brain tumor theory. He started these seizures last May and he was having them every 9-11 days. This last time he went 52 days without incident and then had one. Then another 32 days and he had 2 in one night. I take him to the vet this Wed for his annual. But the vet did tell me there isn't much more that can be done with upping his med's. So I suppose when they start occurring more frequently, I'll really start to worry. This last time he was screaming out right after he stopped shaking from the seizure, which was a new thing. Talk about traumatizing.

[RandZB]

My dog was diagnosed last week with lung cancer that has resulted in a brain tumor, and he had his first seizure last Saturday (which is how we found out about the lung cancer after an immediate trip to the vet). He's never had a single health problem in the 9 years we've had him. Since then he's had one every other day or so. He had a couple yesterday, so in addition to the prednisone we started cytoxan and diazepam, one to try to shrink the cancers and the other to control the seizures. He will also be starting phenobarbital tomorrow, the pharmacy was out of it today. He's 12 years old, a large dog, and the cancer is spread through his lungs. There's nothing we can do but keep him comfortable and try to control the seizures. He's still eating well, drinking well, and trotting around the yard all day just fine. But I was out of town this weekend and when I got back home yesterday, it was like a light had gone out in his eyes. He's not really the same dog he was before. His nubby tail doesn't wag, he doesn't howl at the train. It's a bit reminiscent of my grandmother in the later stages of Alzheimer's. She was doing fine physically, but just wasn't there anymore. I get a similar feeling from Oscar. If after two weeks he is still having seizures and he deteriorates further, we will probably have to put him to sleep. I get hysterical just thinking about it, so I can't imagine how distraught I'll be if it comes to that.

I hope your vet can get the seizures under control. It's so hard to watch them go through that.

[ralphlauren]

My dog had this exact same thing. She had a seizure one night and we took her to the vet and they said the exact same thing about the testing. We ended up not doing testing because she was 18 years old at the time and we just let her live her life on and anti-seizure medicine. I am sorry you are going through this. We tried a few meds and kepra worked for her. Eventually we put her down because of the tumor but we did get a good year once the vet put her on meds

[fayeelle]

Sure, a brain tumor is a possibility but not always. An MRI is super pricey for sure and I've only seen a handful of people able to have that done. Have you considered going to see a veterinary neurologist? Consults don't typically cost much and you may get some piece of mind or even a sense of direction on where to go from here. There are 2 other medications commonly given in conjunction with Phenobarb- Keppra and Potassium Bromide. Might be worth bringing up to your vet.

Eta- 10 isn't exactly considered old, especially for a smaller dog so I wouldn't bank on the old age thing just yet.

[anastasia517]

My in-laws family dog has had a handful of seizures in the last year (since he turned 3). They are unsure what has happened, but the vet has them keeping track of anything new that happened around the time he has them. It has only happened very sporadically, so there is nothing concrete. He has some different meds now due to his history, but he doesn't seem to care and is a normal, happy golden 99.9% of the time. The current guess is that he has some sort of epilepsy, but it happens so infrequently that nothing is known for sure at this point and he is not medicated.

I hope your dog is okay.

[lavender444]

2 years ago our Rottie started having seizures. They started very small and almost unnoticed. Mild fly butting seizures. I took her in immediately and my regular vet struggled to find the cause and properly diagnosis the seizures. Because unless you knew Lola, or knew seizures well they were almost invisible. Lola finally had a large seizure and we made an appointment with a neurologist. He did a work up for $150. He said she had many partial seizures during that evaluate and said that she either had a tumor, or encephalitis. He started her on some anti seizure meds and recommended a MRI for a proper diagnosis and treatment. We took a day to consider it, since she was already almost 9 which is towards the top of a Rottweilers life expectancy. But ultimately, we chose to do the MRI to give her th best chance. They also did a spinal tap with it. She ended up having encephalitis that was causes by her distemper vaccination that was given just a few month prior. Our course of treatment changed a bit to include several antiseizure meds, some fast acting, and some that had to build up in her system over several weeks to be effective. She also was put on a high steroid dose to treat the encephalitis. At the beginning of it, she was taking 27 pills a day. It was rough. She felt crummy and was refusing food. We had to cook for her, and even getting her to eat people food was a challenge. I spent hours a day hand feeding her for weeks. She did improve.

Then one day she started acting unwell again. We took her in, and she had edged up scraping her elbow. That little scrap, because of the steroids suppressing her immune system, turned into a massive infection. Her temp was 105 and she spend 2 days in doggie ICU on heavy in antibiotics. The specialist vet released her care to our normal vet, where lola went back I for the next 3 days for IV antibiotics as out patient treatments. The day after she came off the IV antibiotics and onto oral ones, her temp spiked again. The vet recommended keeping her cool, with hydro therapy (hosing her down with cold water) and giving it a day to give her body time to adjust from coming off IV to PO meds. The next morning I woke up to find her unresponsive. We rushed her back to the ER and she passed away while they were trying to stabilize her.

Even though it was all pretty pricy, and we are far from rich, I don't regret spending that money on her. Encephalitis is treatable. And everything we did was not live saying measures. I'm glad we did what we could, while still staying fair to her quality of life. And, I'm really thankful she made the call when enough was enough.

[msmerymac]

I know I'm late to this, but my mom's beagle has epilepsy. She's always had seizures, although she hasn't in a few years. She's on phenobarbatol. They tried potassium bromide and it was kind of a disaster - getting the meds right is just a try-it-and-see type of thing. Pheno has some possible liver side-effects, but obviously getting the seizures under control is the priority. I'm so sorry your dog is going through this later in life.

[mags]

My GS has seizures. We adopted him knowing his history. He was taking sodium bromide and they were controlled. He had 1 every 2-3 months. They were very scary to watch.

[YahYahs]

Our yellow Lab is 6 (his birthday is Sunday! Woo!). At 4.5yrs, he had his first seizure. In perfect health otherwise. He has had 6 of them in 1.5 years. I took him to the vet after the first one and they said what other people have mentioned - we could get him extensively (and expensively) tested and put him on pheno, but because he was so young, the vet recommended just monitoring. She said if he had more than 1 per month (for a few months in a row), then we'd get serious about it. We decided to just live with it. He's completely happy and healthy otherwise, as far as we can tell.

The weirdest part about his seizures is that they are always at the same time of day - in the 5am hour. He always runs downstairs and throws up immediately before having one. We think that it's something blood-sugar-related. In the past, he has had a lot of "empty stomach" issues, where he'll throw up yellow liquid if he hasn't eaten in a while (his usual feeding schedule was 6am and 6pm). Once we figured that out, we started breaking his meals up so that he now gets a small lunch as well as a "snack" when we go up to bed for the night. That cut down on the puking almost completely. Except right before a seizure.

He had one this morning, actually. He was in bed with me, jumped down (which he NEVER does unless i tell him to get down) and so I sensed what was happening, so I ran downstairs with him. I couldn't get him the whole way downstairs - he stopped on the landing to throw up and then had the seizure right there. I had to push him back a couple times so he wouldn't fall down the rest of the steps, but we managed. This was his first seizure since November, so we're not concerned enough to take him back to the vet about it, but it's so disheartening. I love my guy

The one thing I will say about our suspicions in his case is that there might be a correlation between him having seizures after he swipes food from the kids. We never feed him from the table or any people food anymore (b/c of his sensitive stomach), but he definitely steals from my kids often (they're known for setting a cereal bar down on the coffee table and walking away). I think that in combination with low-blood sugar (due to the seizures always happening about 6-7 hrs after eating) is what is triggering him.

Who knows. I hope all of your pups are well!