On Saturday, I took Iris over to watch some of the NADAC trial. I really wanted the opportunity to work with her around other dogs in a fairly controlled environment. Given all of the problems we've had with other dogs around the condo, I fully expected to work well away from the other dogs to keep Iris under her threshold. Instead, Iris did awesome! She was able to be fairly close to the other dogs and even stayed pretty quiet while I chatted with some friends. It seems the good news is her issues with other dogs in the condo complex are not transferring to other environments. I was very proud of her! I was really glad I decided to head down to the trial. Good training session with Iris, a chance to catch up with some agility friends and talk dog for a bit, and I even managed to get the camera out for some photo practice.
Early Sunday morning, Iris had a couple of seizures. Damn! So she went 15 weeks, 4 weeks, 3 weeks. I'm not sure what that means. Other than the 15 weeks stretch, she's always been in the 3-5 week range. I'm wondering if bringing her to the trial was too much? I think stress can be a trigger for her, although she didn't seem overly stressed at the trial. She had four seizures Sunday morning (typical) and then was fine all day. At about 11:00 pm, she had another seizure and then a couple more in the middle of the nigh and early morning (unusual).
She's been fine all day other than just being generally, strange and crazy. It's not unusual for Iris to act weird for about a day after her seizures. Today, she's been obsessed with going outside. I have no idea why. After taking her out a few times only to have her just stand there in the grass, I started ignoring her. Not easy when all she wants to do is walk from the door to me to the door to me.... She gets fixated on the strangest things. After a time out in her crate she seems to have settled down now. Tomorrow she'll be back to normal, but today she was definitely weird.
Speaking of weird, Iris has a seizure smell. After she's had a couple seizures, she has a very distinct smell. My roommate thought Iris smelled funny on Saturday night (before Iris had any seizures) but didn't really think much of it. She's going to pay attention to it in the future to see if maybe Iris starts smelling weird pre-seizure. It would be interesting if she does.
5 comments:
ah, drat!! I am really sorry to hear Iris had more seizures on Sunday. The smell is really interesting. If she was giving off a unique odor pre-seizure is there anything you could do premptively?
It was nice to see you both. Now I'll have to go check out the pictures! :)
I'm definitely going to pay attention to the smell thing. I'm not great at picking up on subtle smells, so I'm hoping my roommate will notice it! It would make sense that there are body chemistry changes before a seizure, so maybe she is giving off a weird smell? I always give her extra meds after a seizure, so I'm not sure if I could give her sometime before a seizure. I will have to talk to her vet to find out!
Also, think about the fact that there are seizure alert dogs. Perhaps your roommate can be Iris' seizure alert human!
Wow, that was a lot of seizures. Did the vets give you any emergency meds to break the cycle when that starts happening? Like in people , parents can give rectal valium. I dont know what they use in dogs. That must be so hard to deal with.
I think the smell might mean something. Like diabetics can have a smell when their blood sugar is off. I wonder what it could mean in dogs?
I hope things get better for you guys.
We've tried rectal valium and oral valium without a lot of success. Maybe the dose wasn't quite right for her? The few times that she's been really bad, I've taken her to the emergency vet for a valium injection and that's worked well. The vets always warn me that it's going to knock Iris out, but it seems to be the opposite for her. She'll pace and whine constantly, and it really screws up her balance.
I usually end up giving her a slightly higher dose of Phenobarb for the 24hrs after a seizure. I don't know if that's the best solution, but it does break her cycle (she'll just keep having seizures if she doesn't get something, either valium or pb).
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