Hi Kimberly,
Our Pyr Eli has never had seizures but our Boxer Toby did. Seizures are very scary but unfortunately I got somewhat used to them. With Chloe's seizures getting more frequent I would want her started on phenobarbital or have an MRI done. Our boy had a brain tumor so the phenobarb helped for a while.
Hope it's just epilepsy and not anything more serious.
Jill
Jill Allred
Riverbend Boxers
luvabxr@bellsouth.net <mailto:luvabxr@bellsouth.net>
----- Original Message ----- *From:* Kimberlys@hotmail.com <mailto:Kimberlys@hotmail.com> *To:* Great Pyrenees List <mailto:pyrnet-l@pyrnet.org> *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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