Epileptic seizures

[Phil du Plessis]

My boy Ari, 2 and a half years old, had an epileptic fit last night. It lasted about 30  seconds. I took him to the vet this morning, who said I must wait until a next fit to see how we can treat it. I gave him 1mg Alprazolam and 2,5mg Diazepam. He is looking oke now after about 18 hours. I am scared of a next fit. What should I do?

[Sue and Cash]

Dub first seizure was after a bath with a new shampoo from a company with a terrible track record of products that cause harm to animals.  I didn't know till I researched them and found several web sites with death, seizures and other complaints.  His were every two weeks with up to 4 a night.  So no sleep for us the nights he had them.  Not sure how true this might be but the neurologist I saw told us that Irish Setters are more common for cluster seizure activity and are for him, one of the hardest to control with medication breeds.  My breeder at the time told me that was because they seem to metabolize the medications faster than other breeds do.  Whatever the case, I feel badly for anyone having to live that way and for the animal.  My dog was in a zombie state in order to be controlled and even then it wasn't controlling them enough to give him a quality of life.  That being said, my Brittany only had two his whole 10 years of life and he didn't have grand mal.  So it wasn't really a problem for us at all.

 

[Jo Ottinger]

I have heard so much about how bad the Irish Setter is with epilepsy and I guess you can say Hawk is one of the lucky ones so far with his seizures.  They have been so far apart that he is still not on any meds.  Keeping my fingers.  I gave him ice cream after his last GM and it really helped him recover faster.  Keeping lots of ice cream and honey on hand

[Ossian]

I do remember, just once, hearing the thump and thinking Oh no, could I just run now/?

[Finding_Beau]

In the 21 years I have owned English Setters until now, none of my English Setters have suffered a seizure. 9 days after Hammer died, Rose suffered her first seizure. Initially a seizure occurred every 2 weeks but then worsened to say 2 seizures in 5 hours. What is helping me is that I have found a competent and caring vet who is taking one step at a time and monitoring Rose closely. Initially the vet ran a full blood profile and urinalysis which was in the normal range but this does not mean that there is something serious underlying what is going on, particularly because Rose is 12 1/2 years old. Unfortunately Rose could not tolerate even a low dosage of the medication which is Phenomav and she went into a type of coma. The medication is also upsetting Rose's tummie. It is extremely distressing watching your dog suffer a seizure but all each one of us can do is "be there" for them. Rose tends to cry a lot now after she suffers a seizure.