Seizures

[newf4u]

I wondered if any of your Newfs have ever had seizures??? I just went through the most terrifying ordeal only about an hour ago. I heard alot of banging going on and I went into the other room to witness my Newf in the middle of a full blown seizure...oh my god it was horrible. I was helpless I just pet him and talked to him trying to remain calm. After it was done, he layed there for a longtime not moving, eyes very wide, I thought he was paralyzed, he wasn't responding. I cried and held him it was horrible, then he started to slowly move his head, started to respond to me and then he was able to sit up. It's been about an hour and I can't get this dog to calm down, he is pacing the floor, he is also very clumsy, bumping into things and he just isn't acting like himself...I have to wonder if there is any permanent damage to him. Please anyone if you have any experience with this I need some answers. Poor Ben. He is also scheduled to have a femoral head and neck excision in 13 days for his right hip, I am truly at a loss as to what to do. Please help.
Jennifer

 

[Janice Baker]

sorry to hear about your baby. i have no answers for you. i sure wish i could help.

 

[Jeannie]

Jennifer,

I am so sorry!! Unfortunately, as I understand, if a newf is going to be prone to seizures it usually starts around 2 years of age. There are many people here who have experience with seizures--Annie Milliron, Khoiri and Irishmist--just to name a few. Hopefully they will respond.

 

[sarnewfie]

oh no!
i hope he is ok!
epilepsy would be suspect to me, as at two year to three is when it normally rears its ugly head.

 

[IrishMist428]

I am so sorry to hear you are going through this. Unfortunately, there is no test to diagnose Epilepsy. It is done by process of elimination. The Vet will ask if he could have gotten into anything toxic, plants, chemicals, etc can cause seizures. Some medications can also be toxic to some dogs. You should bring him to the vet for an evaluation. If they feel its Epi, they will most likey put him on phenobarbitol to control the seizures. Depending on the severity, length or type of seizure they may prescribe more than one drug. I don't have much experience with it but my Chance had cluster seizures. In the beginning, short in length but many of them in a short period of time. After the seizure, he was disoriented but got right up, pacing like you said. Chance was on Pheno for a month but his clusters got longer in length, and more violent. As I said I don't have much experience with this. I hope you get some help from others, but I would have the vet have a look at him.
Sending you positive thought and prayers. Please keep us posted.

 

[BluwaterNewfs]

While I have not had personal experience with seizures, I do have greinds that have. Patty (Irishmeist) is right - get him to a vet right immeditaelty - don wait!!!

If the vet that is to perform the Femoral Head & neck surgery is not the vet you take Ben to about the seizure - make sure you speak with the surgeon, they want to postpone the surgery until they know more about the seizures.

I would also contact your breeder and let them know and see if there has been any seizures in their lines.

 

[Annie Milliron]

The first thing to keep in mind is that many dogs live normal lives with epilepsy. I agree, get him to the vet right away. As Patty stated, there are no tests for epilepsy and it's a process of elimination. And there are several of us here who have experience with this.

There are some things you need to do. Start a log or a journal. Write down everything you can think of that happened hours before the first seizure. Did you do anything different, did he start a new medication, switch foods, anything that is different, write it down. Also record the date and time of the seizure and how long it happened.

If you dog has a seizure again, try and place a pillow under his head. Sadie's seizures were so violent that she slammed her head on our wood floors. What you've described sounds very familiar. It took Sadie quite some time to come out of it; she would sleep very deeply. Also, you might want to place a towel between Ben's legs. Dogs often urinate and deficate during a seizure. Most of Sadie's seizures occured in the middle of the night. We would sit on the floor and just rub her and talk to her soothingly. There was nothing else we could do.

Also, it is recommended to keep other animals away from a dog having a seizure. This is supposedly because when an animal witnesses another animal having a seizure, their instinct is to attack the animal experiencing the seizure. Our Cora never exhibited this behavior. She was very concerned, and somewhat frightened, so we also had to reassure her. I only bring this up, so that you know that you may want to separate your other animals until the seizure is over.

Hopefully, how ever, Ben won't have another seizure, and if he does, they will be so wide spread. My sister inlaw has a lab who only has seizures once a year, if that.

After you've seen your vet, and if he/she prescribes anti-seizure meds, we can talk about that. IN the meantime.... breathe and know that we're all sending you prayers and good thoughts.

I'll PM you my phone number if you need to talk. Also, there are great resources online. Khiori has one of the best websites in regards to K9 Epilepsy. Hopefully, she log on soon... if not, I'll post a link later!

Hugs,

Annie

[ 10-09-2004, 10:06 AM: Message edited by: Annie Milliron ]

 

[Leslie]

I'm so sorry and know it must be terrifying. My husband has seizures and they're really scary. I'll say bunches of prayers that it was a one time thing.

 

[Gippetto]

Sorry to hear this. We had a Golden with epilepsy. It's a very scary thing to watch. The good news is he lived a normal life with it controlled by phenobarbitol.

Good luck,

Jody
Sophie
Poppa the pug

 

[Khiori]

I'm so sorry One of the worst days of my life was Khiori's first seizure. Here's a link to my site:
http://www.khiori.com/epi/index.html

What you experienced was a grand mal seizure - it is the Ictal stage of the seizure. The time afterward (pacing, staring, etc) is called Post Ictal. It can last a few minutes to days.

Khiori had 12 seizures in about an hour and was back to herself in an hour and a half total.
(Read this so you can recongize what you went through: http://www.khiori.com/epi/sept2000.html )

Diazepam - it's also "valium" but is an antiseizure drug. We had these meds on hand due to her having "weird head things" which we found out that night was epileptic seizures.

Anyway - get a vet appt asap. They're run tests. Blood work, liver work, thyroid, etc. Write down EVERYTHING that happened yesterday and during the seizure, and afterwards. This way you can perhaps find a common thing in case there are more seizures.

You are NOT alone in this. Your baby can STILL lead a normal life. It's not the end of all things. PLEASE believe me in this. There are so many things that medicine can do these days. You have a special baby and he has special needs now. You CAN do this. There are a ton of online support groups and I suggest you join and post everything you did here. You will get lots and lots of encouragement and suggestions from people who deal with this everyday - and unlike me, people who are dealing with this in current medicine.

http://www.khiori.com/epi/support.html
Start with K9-Epil before getting to the next one.

I wish I could take this from your baby. I know how heartbreaking it is. And how helpless we are. Just know that he doesn't know what has happened. Don't make a big deal of it if he potties himself. Give him some natural ice cream or honey afterwards to get his energy back up (just a small small amt of ice cream or a teaspoon of honey) Hang in there. Go have a good cry. ((((((HUGS)))))

 

[ggplusgus]

I agree with everyone else....get him to the vet. My newf did not start until she was almost 5. They ruled out everything so we think it was epilepsy. Very uncommon for her age. She would do the same thing after, pace etc. We tried different drugs and they worked for a long time. Raven had snapped at my mother while having a seizure. I was told to stay away from her while she was having them...unless of course she was in danger of hurting herself. I would talk her through them, and she would wake up not knowing what was going on. I have never felt more helpless in my life. My vet and I tried different doses until we got it so it didnt make her too druged and she didnt have break through seizures. She lived for 3 more years...she did still have them but it was a great 3 years otherwise.

 

[newf4u]

Thank you so much everyone. You have all given me so much encouragement and advice, I really don't know what I would do without this site. (L). Last night was a long night. Finally got Ben settled down by about 12:30, he was then exhausted and went into a nice deep sleep. I finally fell asleep at about 1:30, you know always a MOM first right.

. This morning Ben is back to his normal self. He is not experiencing any of the clumsiness he had last night and his eyes look like his. I have left a message in with his vet, of course being a long weekend, he will be hard to get ahold of. Why do these things always seem to happen late Friday night of a long weekend??? Needless to say I am not letting Ben far out of my sight. I will keep you posted as to what I learn about his condition. I am really hoping this is a one time thing. I am going to go check out the K9 Epi site now...thank you all so much. HUGS FROM BEN AND JEN

 

[DreamTime Newfs]

I am so sorry for your troubles with your baby. I am sending many thoughts and prayers your way.

 

[newf4u]

I just wanted to update all of you on what has been happening since my last post. It has been a rollercoaster since Friday. Ben ended up having another seizure Saturday at about 3:15, then again that night at 7:30. At this point I was able to get ahold of my vet and he met me at his office. He immediately gave Ben a sedative to calm him down because he was pacing and very hyper. He did calm down and then he took some blood it was good to be able to get blood from him post-ictal. We found out his blood sugar level was extremely low 3.1, his normal blood sugar baseline is 5.5...I know this because we just did bloodwork on him in preparation for his upcoming surgery on the 21st. We are not sure what is causing the hypoglycemia, but for now we are going to focus on regular feedings like every 3-4 hours with the addition of some sugars such as honey. He is on Phenobarbatol twice a day for the next 30 days. Then if this is keeping the seizures at bay we will ween him off of the phenobarbatol and just focus on his diet. Wow if he is only hypoglycemic, that would be nice, I think we would be lucky at that. But the vet is concerned why he has low blood sugar and is going to investigate further. As for now we are in a wait and see situation as far as his hip surgery goes, we want to get this straightened out first. So keep us in your prayers, we need all the help we can get. Thank you everyone.

 

[sarnewfie]

best wishes going out that you find out the cause and soon;
thanx for letting us know.
hugs to him.

 

[BoundlessNewfs]

So sorry to hear you're going through this. When I was a kid, we had a mix breed female who had epilepsy. She would suddenly back up until she ran into a wall, then would fall to the floor and tremble and jerk uncontrollably. Finally, she would kind of pass out for a few minutes. Afterwards, she seemed kind of spaced out and uncoordinated for a while, but then would bounce back and be normal again until the next time it happened.

 

[newf4u]

Just thought I would let you know that Ben has not had a seizure since yesterday morning at 4:15. He displayed absolutely normal behaviour all day yesterday after he was finished with his post-ictic state. It was so nice to have Ben back. I continued to feed him every 4 hours all day and he ate every meal which was really good to see. He also received his pheno twice yesterday. So so far all is well...I'm hoping that this is the beginning of the end of his ordeal with this...I guess time will tell.

 

[afreas]

Disorientation after seizures is pretty normal. After the seizure the brain has to get re-coordinated, and get rid of the by products of the high metabolic activity (during a seizure metabolic activity in the brain is greatly increased). I can't speak for dogs but after a seizure you are real tired and confused, and sometimes a bit beat up but it isn't too awful, just foggy. Also your memory is a bit screwed up too, short term stuff gets dropped and you have some gaps. Life can go on. One question to folks that have had dogs with epilepsy. Has anyone every heard of them prescribing Dilantin (phenytoin) for dogs?
ART

 

[Giddyuppy]

I've been looking for updates on your boy. Hopefully, he's still seizure free! Prayers and well wishes from my neck of the woods to yours.

 

[Khiori]

Art, from what I am seeing about Dilantin, it's not that effective in dogs due to their high metabolism. To get the same effects as humans, the doseage needs to be pretty high. It tends to be eliminated from the dog's system fairly quickly.

Jennifer, I'm so happy to hear that Ben has stablized and that you have a pretty solid lead to follow in his seizuring. I hope you NEVER get to see another one in your life!