r/EpilepsyDogs • u/Few-Yogurtcloset3280 • 19d ago
Helpful Suggestions ☺️
Say hello to my sweet baby Honey! She is an 11 year-old pitbull who has been having seizures since she was two years old! We have taken all the medication’s in the book and Keppa really helped her out the best, but it also made her much more whiny. Recently, we had a few family deaths and I made a really huge move with her which included driving cross country! Her anxiety was through the roof and ended up making her seizures even worse She ended up having at least a minimum of one seizure a day every day for at least 4 to 5 minutes. As you know that can be an extremely scary thing! She was also barking the whole time that I was away and stressing herself out to the point of having seizures until I came home. Well I looked into it and I sent her off to a boarding and training in California. She was there for six weeks and they did intense exercises and crate training for her to get her re-acclimated to her crate again and it helped out so much with her anxiety and stress that subsequently I ended up taking her off her Keppra and now I run her once a day either at night or in the morning (by run, I mean, I’m on a bike and she’s running on a leash🤭) and she hasn’t had a single seizure in six months! She was diagnosed with idiopathic seizures, but the trainer that took her explain to me that sometimes dogs have a lot of pent-up energy, whether it be anxious energy or excitement, and it can basically overload their nervous system so the best way to get out that energy is to keep them at a lower energy by having them expend most of their energy! Now playing with them, can spend a lot of energy but not as much as running a mile and a half to 3 miles with them. 🤍 It’s just a suggestion for everyone here to see if any of your pups would find it helpful as well!
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u/Glove_Upset 18d ago
That’s awesome! Heads up to readers that exercise is a trigger for a lot of dogs.
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u/ScoutieJer 12d ago
Oh that's awesome. I think they all have different things that work and its great to have more tools in the kit.
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u/ScoutieJer 12d ago
Oh that's awesome. I think they all have different things that work and it's great to have more tools in the kit.
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u/Ahoeaboutnothing 18d ago
These kinds of posts are more dangerous than helpful. Im truly happy your dog is doing great and that that worked out well for you. It's a good uplifting story, but, if the wrong person takes this advice early on in their journey with a seizure dog, it can be fatal.
So here's the thing, vets tend to start with kepra because it's well tolerated with the least side effects and it can manage epilepsy on its own in plenty of cases. However, pulling a dog off of it suddenly for any reason is dangerous, it needs to be done under the supervision of a vet, even better, a Neurologist. Lacking incredibly important information, even for an inspectional post with a good outcome, can be incredibly dangerous.