----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 4:15
PM
Subject: [pyrnet] Seizures?
Hi Everyone,
My name is Kimberly and I live in Ohio with my
husband and our four dogs. An 11 year old chihuahua, A 6 year old Border
Collie,
Our Great Pyrenees, Chloe, who will be 3 in
January, and our new baby boy, an almost 7 month old Great Pyr,
Tucker.
We got Tucker back in the middle of May. We
took him to the vet one day and when we came home, we discovered a
disaster
in the house. Chloe was covered in poop. It was
all over the house. Her cage was ashambles. Her water and food bowls
were
knocked upside down and just everywhere. It was
a huge mess with food and poop and water (urine?) everywhere. I
commented
that it looked like she had a seizure. But then
we quickly dismissed that idea because really? A seizure? Why would that
happen?
We just decided that possibly she just messed
herself and stepped in it, slipped, got upset and it went downhill from
there.
At the time we had only had Tucker in the house
for maybe 4 or 5 days. He had brought kennel cough to the other dogs as
well.
Chloe had a slight cough at the time. Other
than that she has been healthy all her life. She's not a super big eater and
her highest
weight has been 97 pounds. The only other thing
she's ever had wrong with her is that her bottom fang tooth turned purple.
We
took her to vet for that and they said it was a
burst blood vessel. It filled her tooth with blood and it would remain tinted
purple
the rest of her life. An injury probably caused
by her vigorous playing of Tug of War with our Border Collie. We had noticed
the
day before we saw the purple tooth, that she no
longer would play Tug of War.
Then on August 17th at 6am I woke up in bed to
find her convulsing. I didn't know she had even gotten in bed with me and
she
was actually lying in the middle and across.
Almost on top of me. Her seizure lasted less than a minute and she had
urinated on
the bed and released her anal glands. I was
hysterical and called my husband home early from work (her works the night
shift).
When he got home she was still in the
post-ictal stage and pacing and acting paranoid. It was a Sunday so after she
calmed
down a little bit, I got online and did some
research, only to find that there isn't alot that can be done unless the
seizure is a
very long one. Then it becomes an emergency. So
we waited til Monday to call our vet. He wasn't going to be in til Tuesday
so
we took her in then. They ran alot of blood
tests on her to rule out liver, kidney, diabetes problems. He told us it could
be just
unexplained or even a brain tumor. But there we
no sense putting her thru an MRI for one seizure as there was nothing we
could
do even if it was a brain tumor. He also
agreed that it was likely she had a seizure back in May 3 months before.
Her bloodwork
all came back perfectly normal. He told us to
just keep an eye on her and to enjoy her and to live our lives normally.
We finally relaxed and then last night at
1:45am she had another one, then another this morning at 8:21 and yet another
one
at 1:50 this afternoon. Now I'm very upset. We
are still waiting for the Vet's office to call us back. We don't know what to
do
now. He did say back in August that he didn't
want to put her on medication cause they can sometimes do more harm than
good,
unless she started having more frequent
seizures. It's the scariest thing to witness and then the post-ictal phase
following a seizure
is truly heart-breaking. To watch your beloved
dog run around looking paranoid or like she doesn't know you for up to two
hours
is horrible. They say that can last for several
days even. Each seizure today has been a little bit shorter and the post-ictal
phase
has also been shorter. We are so grateful for
that much.
Great Pyrenees is NOT a breed known for having
seizures. So I guess my question is to anyone reading this, Have any of you
ever
had ANY experience with your Pyr's and
seizures? Or any other dog you have? I just need to hear from people who may
have gone
thru this cause we are devastated that this is
happening to our beautiful girl. Also back in August when she was weighed, she
had
dropped to 92 pounds. Recently she's looked
thinner to us some, but we won't know for sure til we get her back to the vet
and
weighed again. The only medication she
takes is Sentinel. Which she did start for the first time On August 1st. She's
had her dose
on Sept. 1st but now I'm not sure I want to
give her tomorrow's dose.
Thank you for reading. I've been a member of
the list for some time but this is my first post. I hope I'm doing this
correctly. Altho I
honestly do hope no one has ever had to go thru
this.
~Kimberly
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