Seizures can have several causes, but many times, in dogs, it is idiopatic.
Epilepsy is rather common in all dogs.
Generally it starts at two and some dogs barely have a halting step, or crooked gait, or get stiff for a few seconds, to those like yours, that seize completely and are later out of it for a bit.
I don’t know today, but some years ago, the protocol was to have the dog examined to rule out other possible causes for the seizures and chart what kind and how often those happened.
At a certain threshold, so many of this or that kind and depending on how ofter, the dog may be medicated.
From may dogs we had over many years, we had two have seizures.
One rottie, we had been showing her in conformation and obedience and one early morning she started seizing and it lasted several minutes, then she was out of it for some more minutes.
That kept happening frequently over the next hour, how long it took us to get her to the vet, that kept her in his clinic office and was treating her aggressively with fluids and medication.
He never could find any reason for the seizures, everything else checked out fine.
He commented that it was scary to have a big dog as she was, in a crate in the room, trashing in there violently.
Once stable, he sent her home with medication and, on full medication, she was a zombie.
After a month, he started us tapering the medication to try to give her a better quality of life and when we were at half, she started again having seizures one morning early, we took her right in and she died as we got to the hospital.
We later found two of that litter had also died from seizures and half that litter had seizures.
The breeder was one of the best in the USA, with imported, many titled dogs, that were known for being very sound and long lived.
A friend was getting started in rotties and gave her to us.
The breeder kept watching other litters and said no other litter had problems.
That is not very common, whatever caused her seizures was in a part of her brain that evidently was important to proper homeostasis and that, the vet thought, is what killed her.
Then this dog I have now, at two started having the light seizures, where she would stop while doing something, maybe one leg stretched out in midair, stand there dazed, then in a few seconds come out of it and continue doing what she was doing.
Our vet took some videos and put them up on VIN and specialists looked at them and told us what to do about it.
She was on medication for seizures for two years, then our vet started tapering it off and she has been off medication four years.
We were warned they probably would come back as she got older, but as now eight years old, they are not back, yet.
So, you can see, whatever kinds of seizures your dog has, first the vet has to figure which kind they are, then what to do about it and, well, it can be anything, from the very serious to something very easy to treat.
A friend had a golden with seizures and she was a multiple MACH agility dog, also obedience and field titled.
Hers were first controlled with medication, then medication tapered off and they figured it was tied in to low blood sugar, so as long as she had something to eat within three hours, she would not have seizures.
If she didn’t get to eat for longer than that, seizures were apt to happen.
For her, it was a question of management with food, not medication.
Hope your dog’s vet will help you get your dog’s seizures figured out.
