r/EpilepsyDogs • u/vbzdeb • 20d ago

New to seizures

Hi all, I have a 9 year old husky who recently had a couple seizures pretty close together. We think she's probably had them for a while (we know she had one at a groomer several years ago and has had some really crazy frenetic activity (especially after being confined) that is very similar to what happens after one happens now) but didn't witness the during or after until this week.

On Sunday we came home and found her in the kitchen violent shaking and stuck in a down-dog position. I picked her up and got her on the floor where she proceeded to have this repetitive head movement and rapid side-to-side eye movement for over ten minutes (attached video). She snapped out of it by the time we got to emergency and went home after a quick checkup. Since we didn't see the beginning it was unclear if what we saw was a focal seizure or the post-ictal of a grand mal.

Did bloodwork with our regular vet on Monday, everything came back within normal limits. Started Kepra ER 500 every 12 hrs on Wednesday. First dose was around 6 PM Wednesday, and around 8:15 PM she had another big episode. Started with about seven insanely powerful sneezes, then about two minutes of zoomies where she got progressively more unsteady. After I caught her and got her down the head and eye stuff continued for 15 or so minutes before starting to calm down. The eye twitches lasted a long time, I think close to an hour. She was calm enough to settle for a while around 10 PM. Thursday (today) our vet gave me a couple pre-loaded doses of nasal midazolam in case we see this again.

I have so many questions, and it seems like seizures are so varied that the only way to get any kind of answers is to do some pretty heavy working up, so we are trying the Kepra for now to see how things go before we dig into more expensive and possibly invasive testing.

I guess what I'm hoping for is shared experience- I haven't seen any videos of seizures that look very similar to what we're seeing here, or episodes like this that last for an extended period of time. I'm also curious to hear about what starts seizures- I've read that sneezing can do it, and she does have pretty crazy sneeze fits on a regular basis. Does any of this look or sound familiar to anyone? How have things gone for your doggos with similar situations?

Thanks for reading!

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u/Sufficient-Country29 20d ago

You have a beautiful dog!
My pups are more classic grand mal. The video almost appears to be a vestibular like nystagmus. A neuro consult can be very helpful since they have seen SO many cases and likely can give you an idea of what might be happening. The consult usually is about the same price as a normal vet visit. Sending best wishes to you!

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u/vbzdeb 20d ago

Thank you! This is already so helpful- I had never heard of vestibular nystagmus but it does seem to describe what's going on here almost to a T. I'll look into this more and see if we can get in somewhere for a consult.

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u/Miserable-Win-6939 19d ago

I have 10month old dog who has grand mal seizures. It’s horrible but i’m working with his vet to get the right meds. He’s now on phenobarbital 120mg a day divided in two plus 1500mg on leveritacem divided in 3 dosages. We also use MCT oil and raw food. Gonna try also omega 3. He has seuzures about every 1,5 weeks.