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Australian Shepherds With Epilepsy

My 6 year old blue merle has had epilepsy since she was a year old and was wondering what anyone knows about this. She has some very bad seizures and is on alot of medications for the control of them. Sometimes she just walks around the room in a catatonic mode.

Comments for Australian Shepherds With Epilepsy

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Aussie with seizures
by: Anne

Hi,
I am sorry you and your ausssie have had to deal with this. This is a problem in our breed right now.
I have a lot to tell you and maybe some avenues for help. Please e-mail me privately and I will do all I can to help you.

Anne Calmes
Gold Ring Aussies
Louisiana, USA
goldringkennel@aol.com

so sorry
by: Anonymous

I'm so sorry for both you and your boy. we had a boy, Luke, who also had terrible seizures due to epilepsy.He developed it at age two, and lived to be five. for him, it had to do with his Liver(no trauma to the head, not food allergies, since we fed him only grain free, holistic food) It is fairly common in the breed, I'm sad to say,but not all will have it.

There is a website you can look into it, its called Toby's foundation.
I really hope and pray your boy will somehow beat this.

Epilepsy
by: Anonymous

So sorry for you and your girl. We had an Aussie mix who started having started having petit and grand mal seizures around age 2 and continued until she was about 13. She was thankfully seizure free the last several years of her life (she lived to be almost 17). We chose not to medicate her, but did have some success controlling her seizures once we learned some of her triggers - flashlights, sudden loud noises and being startled from a deep sleep were the main ones we could control. I feel for you and wish you luck dealing with this.

Australian Shepherds with Epilepsy
by: Eva G

My Aussie/Collie mix began having seizures this year at the age of 2. One day of 5 seizures convinced me to go ahead and put him on phenobarbital and potassium bromide. He has been seizure-free since. Took a while to get him used to the medications, but for me it was well worth the re-training and consistent reassurance it took to have my Tbone back. His initial seizures the first day were environmentally produced (sudden loud noises during sleep), but the subsequent ones were not. My vet said that seizures are actually common in many dogs. I wish you luck with your dog. It is possible for the dog to have a fairly normal, healthy life.
http://www.canine-epilepsy.com/overview.html
Toby's Foundation is another great resource.

It's manageable, you get used to it, so there's that
by: Anonymous

I recently lost Dusty, my 6 year old Aussie. He was the first dog I had ever had, and I loved him like he was my child. He had his first seizure around a year old, and after many very expensive trips to an emergency vet in the middle of the night (which was his usual time for seizures), I finally learned how to control his seizures myself with medicine.

This is my experience and advice: You can avoid the major vet bills. It was traumatizing at first and I didn't know what was going on. I worried for his life everytime he had one. The vet did not offer advice at managing it on my own, maybe because it was a 1000 dollars every time for a late night visit. But what she essentially did was give him a "loading dose" of phenobarbital or keppra. I stopped being able to afford those vet visits.
Here's what I recommend, and what I wish someone had told me sooner.

1) You can recreate loading doses when they have seizures, with flexible prescriptions given to you by a regular vet (more than 30 days, cause you will need extra for controlling seizures). This was a big trial I went through, getting the prescriptions right for what he needed, but that was the end result: flexible prescriptions. You don't have to see a pet neurologist necessarily like I did. Start small, and increase dosage as needed, with your regular vet's supervision. When they have a seizure, give them an extra dose of certain medicines, like Phenobarbital and Keppra. Some aren't recommended for extra doses, like Potassium Bromide, or clorazapate (an emergency medicine given for two days after a seizure). Every time they have a seizure, give them another dose. I started relying heavily on phenobarbital for this. It was the most effective. The goal is to stop them from having seizures, because the more they have at one time, the increased chance of more seizures, overheating, and brain damage. Do this as many times as necessary. For Dusty it was usually two extra doses.

2) Get used to it. It becomes a part of life. It's not something to freak out over. I wish I had known that sooner. I developed a routine every time he'd go blind or have a seizure, and it was usually within 30 minutes that he was medicated and resting. I was good at giving him medicine, at the right time, to prevent more. I was good at staying calm and soothing him. I'd clean up his poop and pee without feeling sorry for myself. I became accustomed to it and was willing to deal with it as long as necessary, because in between seizures he was a happy, relatively healthy dog who loved walks, swimming, cuddles, and car rides.

3) If he got too tired, from a long car ride, or a long hike, he was more likely to have a seizure when he was sleeping later. So he loved walks, but I kept them easy, no more than 4 miles a day.

4) If it's severe enough, everywhere you go, bring his emergency medicine and the bread to put it into easily put it down his throat, as well as paper towels and cleaner. It's no fun when it happens in the car, but that happened very rarely, maybe 3 times in his whole life.

5) Get blood work done every 6 months or so to see their phenobarbital levels. Too much can hurt them, too little won't help as it should.

6) Do everything you can to make sure they don't get lost. I never expected this to be the way he would die. He only went outside alone on a cable to use the bathroom, often with me sitting on the porch. He had a rabies tag with the vet's number, but no information on his epilepsy, medications, or my information. I didn't like the idea of getting dogs microchipped when he was a puppy. I was foolish in retrospect. I was at work and my husband put him outside in the dark early morning, but didn't put his cable on correctly, maybe snapping it around his rabies tag without realizing. Then he went back inside. 5 minutes later he came out and he was gone. He called and ran around the neighborhood in the dark but he never came. I stayed out of work for two weeks and searched for him, putting up fliers, sitting for 8 hours a day in a car driving around, and walking the woods where he was last seen. I knew he had a limited amount of time without his medicine. Someone found his body inside an electric fence, so very close to where I had been in the woods a couple days before calling him, but he was probably catatonic, in and out of seizures, brain-damaged possibly, and couldn't respond. He may have pushed through the fence while blind and unfeeling, as would happen, and got stuck inside of it, or came through the one open gate, and blind and seizing, couldn't find his way out. So I strongly advise anyone to prepare for this scenario as I did not. Your epileptic dog probably needs his medicine, especially if it's severe, so either have better ways for him to go outside, have him microchipped, and/or have good medical tags on his collar. His life may depend on it.

Either way, I prayed for closure, so I praise God he gave it to me. Nothing lasts in this fallen world, so love your epileptic dog with all of your ability, but know that you are giving them an artificial life. Without you, in nature, they wouldn't live, so it's up to you. I understand your struggle and I encourage you to not lose heart. Their few years are worth it.

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