On July 22, 2011 we put our little Cocoa of 15 years to sleep. We should have done it sooner. I am hoping that someone can learn from this story. In March of 2011 our little toy poodle who we found wondering the streets 15 years ago, had his first seizure. He had always been an active , healthy little guy, never ill. He continued to have seizures for the next week. I took him to the vets office. They ran blood tests which came back normal. They were checking for organ failure. Their belief was that organ failure could cause seizures in older dogs. Since the blood test came back normal, his diagnosis was "Epilepsy". They prescribed Phenobarbital for the seizures. Over the next month the seizures had subsided, however his co-ordination was getting worse. He was starting to run into walls, and fall over. He would pace excessively , just walking and walking, until he was so exhausted that he would just drop. At this point my vet didn?t have any answers other than he was old and it was time to put him down. But since he was still having good days, I couldn?t do it. Looking for answers, I researched the side effects of Phenobarbital and the drug alone could cause confusion and unsteadiness. I was relieved when I read this, thinking that could be the problem, I reduced his dosage in half. Another month went by, he had days where he was doing good, almost back to normal. His walking was steady, he would go outside to do his duty, and he always had a good appetite. His bad days would consist of: walking into furniture and walls, getting lost and tangled in the legs of tables and chairs, getting behind doors, not being able to get out, pacing and walking, never relaxing, relieving himself on the floor ( something he never did before), staring at the ceiling, falling of the couch?. but through this he always had a good appetite. Another couple of months passed and his bad days became more frequent. Added to the list was a slight panting and moaning . My husband and I contemplated having him put to sleep almost every day. As soon as we decided it was time, he would seem to come out of it, and have a good day. Then on Friday, July 22 at around 4:30 pm everything changed. His day started off as usual in the morning. Excessive walking and pacing, walking into walls and furniture, but then he followed me in my office and laid under my desk for hours sleeping peacefully. Later in the afternoon he started panting and moaning excessively. He seemed more out of it, not really knowing where he was at all. His breathing became labored, he was dripping saliva from his mouth, and when I held him his head would drop. I knew it was time. It was already 5:00 and our vets office was closed. I called a different vet that I knew might be open, that Cocoa had never been to. This vet, came highly recommended to us by our neighbors. We took Cocoa in to be put to sleep. When we walked in the door, this new vet did an examination of him and saw his symptoms. He said he believed it was a Brain Tumor. This is the first time we had ever heard this diagnosis. Never even thought of it as a possibility, but it seemed to make sense. We proceeded to put our little Cocoa to sleep as the vet indicated it would be the best thing to do. After coming home from the Vet, I started to research on the internet his suggestion of a Brain Tumor. I have come to the conclusion that Cocoa did have a Brain Tumor. My problem is, I believe he did suffer at the end. I have tremendous guilt for not realizing that he had a brain tumor at the beginning. If we had known , we would have put him to sleep earlier. Knowing that a time would come when he would have pain. It is websites like this that help to educate all of us to make the right decisions for our pets, even when they are seeing a vet, our own research is still a must.

I'm sorry this happened and witnessing a full tonic-clonic (Grand Mal) seizure for the first time is very, very scary. The first thing you need to know is that Cedar was unconscious throughout and not feeling any pain. Cedar will need to rest for a while and may seem a bit woozy for a few days, but the seizure itself was almost certainly more upsetting for you than for her. You did the right thing by rushing her to the emergency vet because a 'continuous' seizure (lasting more than 4-5 minutes) or a'cluster' seizures (dog comes round and then has another seizure withing a few minutes or hours) are real emergencies. The dog can overheat from the seizure activity and die fairly quickly or the repeated and violent seizures can cause brain damage. Late onset seizures do indicate that something serious may be going on so you will need to take her to a vet ASAP and get a full workup. It could be a brain tumor, but also head trauma, getting into something toxic, or low thyroid or heart worm disease. Your vet needs to rule out other things before you go to the 'worst case' scenario of a brain tumor. He/she might also recommend just putting Cedar on anti-seizure meds rather than going the CT scan and spinal tap route to rule out a brain tumor at this stage. It really depends on overall health. Phenobarbital is usually the first med recommended by vets for seizures, with Potassium Bromide a close second. Both are quite affordable. There are several other meds out there but those tend to be more expensive. One thing your vet will ask you to do is keep a log of all seizures. You should start this now, noting down everything you think happened in the last couple of days - both behaviorally and physically, how long the seizure lasted and what Cedar's recovery time is. Also note down any behavioral changes as they might indicate possible brain damage. I have had two dogs who developed late onset seizures (at 10 and 11) in the past. They lived for three or four years quite happily and with good quality of life on seizure meds and may have had very slow growing brain tumors. We decided in consultation with our vet just to treat the symptoms not go for expensive diagnostics. They had developed other serious medical conditions when we reluctantly decided to let them go for their own sakes. The seizures were well controlled for quite a few years. On the other hand, I have a younger dog with epilepsy right now. He was only 5 at onset, and is hyper-sensitive to many different drugs. As his seizures were hard to control with the usual meds, we decided to go ahead with the CT scan and spinal tap to rule out a possible brain tumor. It was $$$ but worth it for our peace of mind. He is also on a new to us med (Keppra) because he needed really high doses of Phenobarbital and we were afraid of liver damage - the pros and cons of various anti-seizure meds is another thing to discuss with your vet. I've included a link for a website with a lot more useful information on dogs with seizures below. I hope all this helps and wish you and Cedar the best. Remember, you know Cedar best, and will make the best decisions for her quality of life because you love her. Here is a link that might be useful: canine epilepsy guardian angels

we have a 2.5 year old black lab that has them every now and then. he first loses control of his back legs, starts dragging them or falling over, then his whole body goes rigid and trembles. after about a minute, as he starts to come out of it, he starts drooling and peeing. then he slowly gets control back, usually starting with his head and last thing is his hind legs about 2-3 minutes after the first symptoms. MOST of the time they come on if he is startled and awoken from sleep, but he won't have them eveyr time he is startled awake. the vet said that no more frequent than they are, and because all the tests show negative, to live with it. he would rather not put him on drugs "just because", if it can ever be determined what is causing them or if they become more frequent, then he would feel comfortable with drugs. but for now, since it is maybe 1 a month for the most part, not to worry. he has done this since about age 2. he has had 3 in one day once, but that was the only time. usually it is just once a month or even once every couple months. after seeing the post about having them when not eating, i am beginning to wonder if that may be part of his problem. he is a real finicky eater, soemtimes his food will sit for 2 days untouched. other times he will devour it as we pour it and then want more. doc says he is just like that, nothing shows up as to why he would not eat. his teeth are good, no GI problems, and we have switched his food several times. we lean more towards the fact tha tour daughter likes for him to eat what she does, so he thinks he should have people food. he has got to teh point that if you are eating a burger and fries and give him a fry, he won't eat it until he is sure your burger is gone and there is no chance he will get a bite!

I can help with the costs, based on the prices at NC State vet school. Physical exam, neurological exam, and minimum data base (CBC, chem panel, UA, thyroid panel) is about $250. Since the dog in question hasn't had anything yet, if there is a specialist available I'd just do that because the PE and neuro exam is probably only about $40 more than the regular vet's physical exam, and you get it done by the boarded neurologist. Bloodwork costs usually about the same if the regular vet is using a send-out reference lab as the vet school. With those tests, you can rule out many metabolic and endocrine causes of seizures. One that wouldn't be ruled out is if the dog has a portosystemic shunt or other serious liver disease, then you'd diagnose that with a pre- and post- bile acids test, which runs about $100. It wouldn't be wrong to skip that test if liver disease was not high on the differential list. Next level of diagnosis is the tick born disease panel. At school, we have the super-duper tick panel that includes Ehlrichia canis, Babesia canis, Bartonella henselae, Bartonella vinsonii, Rickettsia rickettsii, and Borrelia burgdorferi for $100. Since both Ehlrichia and Bartonella can cause seizures and the dog can look relatively normal otherwise, that would be a good panel to run. Also both diseases are very treatable. Fungal diseases can also cause seizures, so you could test for those too. Apparently, NC State doesn't often run a fungal panel, because that isn't an option in the clin path lab. It may be something they send out, so I don't know the cost. Next step or somewhere in there would be a CSF tap. That requires general anesthesia. All together it would probably cost about $300, including CSF culture and sensitivity, cytology, and fluid analysis. If up to this point nothing is found, you could elect to stop diagnosis if 1) the dog is of an age where epilepsy would be common to occur (1-3 years) and is otherwise completely healthy and the labwork is completely normal or 2) if you weren't going to do anything about a brain tumor anyway (surgery or radiation). If you wanted to go all out, an MRI is $2000 and a CT is $1200. Like I said though, if you weren't interested in doing brain surgery, and I have no idea how much that would cost, and were just going to treat with anti-seizure medications in either case, then you could easily forego the brain scans. I found an article that said about 30% of seizures can be traced to an underlying cause. Which means that if the dog has recurring seizures, it is most likely to be due to epilepsy. Certain breeds are predisposed, and epilepsy usually starts between ages of 1-3 years. The emergency vet who saw Ana thought she had epilepsy, because she was the right age and right breed. He's still not entirely convinced that the sulfa drugs caused the seizure. But since she only had the one, I don't particularly care what the problem was because it's long gone. Labmomma- usually a dog with menigitis is very sick, so that was a really poor choice for an example. A better illustration would have been if I said the dog had Ehlrichia or Babesia, both of which can cause seizures in otherwise healthy dogs. So can fungal infections, many toxins, protozoal infections, and some metabolic disorders such as hypocalcemia.