My dog's Epiphen pills are hard to split. Is uneven splitting safe?

That would not cause any harm anyway as the dosage of an entire epiphen would not be toxic. Slight sedation can be caused by that but no other signs otherwise. I would recommend to continue to give half epiphen tonight as usual. Please do not hesitate to contact us again on the forum or by requesting a consultation if you have any more questions or to discuss it any further.

A single dose for a dog half the bodyweight is unlikely to cause any significant effects. I would not be overly concerned but monitor for any nervous system signs and report to your vet if you notice any abnormal symptoms

Unfortunately you do not mention the weight of the dog which received the phenobarbital. A normal dose would be 2-3 mg of phenobarbital per kg (2.2 lbs) of dog. If your dog is much smaller than 6 kg (13lbs) then you need to watch it closely for the next few hours. Your dog will most likely get very sleepy. If it sleeps so deep you cannot wake it up or if you think it is not breathing properly, you will need to take it to the emergency room. If the ingestion occurred within the last hour and the amount ingested was a significant overdose, you should consider taking your dog to the emergency vet so that vomiting can be induced to get the drug out of the system. Also if your dog has liver disease, please take it to the emergency clinic.

Thank you for reaching out to Pet Coach. This should not be of major concern but may cause some mild sedation in your dog that ingested that dose unnecessarily. If your dog is on medications as well, phenobarbitol may or may not be OK to combined with those medications so that is something else to consider. As well as dogs that have decrease in liver function may process this drug a bit differently. If your springer is otherwise healthy and not on any medications, then sedation (if anything) may be the only problem.

Phenobarbital therapy in dogs is begun at 2 to 4 mg/kg twice daily. So for a 33kg dog that would mean 66 to 132 mg twice a day. We always try to start low and increase if needed but he was essentially really underdosed in the beginning with taking 30mg twice a day. He is now on a more appropriate dose. Sedation is normal when therapy is initiated but once the dog's body gets used to the drug (after about 2 weeks) he should become more like himself. If you are really worried, you can ask the vet to run a phenobarbital level blood test to see if his dosing is too high and it can be adjusted accordingly. Please be aware that dogs will never be completely seizure free even while on anti-seizure medication. Breakthrough seizures are common but they should be pretty infrequent. If he continues to seizure or does not do well on the phenobarbital there are other medication options so please work closely with your vet.

Phenobarbital is within a group of drugs known as barbiturates. The most common side effects in dogs, by far, are sedation, increased drinking, increased urination, and increased appetite. If the drugs were the cause of the behaviors you are witnessing, this would have to be classified as some sort of paradoxical reaction to the medication. In other words, it would be causing symptoms that are opposite to the purpose of the drug itself. Though I have not personally witnessed this, there are reports in rare instances of dogs becoming hyperactive and agitated after use of phenobarbital. While I can not say with certainty that this is the cause of the behaviors, It is definitely curious that they began at the same time as medication was started. You may want to speak with your vet about these observations and possibly choose a different medication.

16mg every 8-12 hours is well within the safe and therapeutic range of phenobarbital for a 9 pound dog. If you were actually giving 48mg each time, this would be an overdose, and could cause coma and subsequent death. I am very sorry that Gigi died. If you would like to discuss this further, initiate a one-on-one consult and I can answer all of your questions.