QUESTION

Everything clinical has been ruled out as being the cause of my dog's sudden illness. Eight weeks ago she had a seizure followed by two more twenty days later but in between she showed an exercise intolerence difficulty in swallowing and breathing and recently started vomiting. At night she pants loudly down her nose which keeps me awake she is clearly very poorly with some strange behaviour changes. Short of a MIR scan which I can't afford the vets lead me to believe we will never find out what is wrong, but what should I expect? Will she become very ill? Suffer? Satching the seizures was traumatic. One vet put her on epiphen and steroids and when I changed vets, unhappy with not being told anything, the new vet took her off the medication I thought was to control epilepsy so if it isn't that was is causing the seizures? She has always been a very active, intelligent free spirit, with a great sense of humour please help me help her. I can't bear to see her like this!

Susan

ANSWER

Dear Susan,
Epiphen and steroids are used to control fits, yes, but to take the dog off suggests that the second vet thinks there may be an infection. If so, then these new drugs should settle things. Assuming they do then there ought to be no more episodes. However, fits can be one offs and also can occur at long intervals. idiopathic epilepsy is a major problem in some dog breeds. We know they are epileptic, and the cause is simply in the dog's brain patterns.

James Haddow