My dog has seizures. How can I control and reduce their frequency?

This will depend on the diagnosis. Seizures may be controlled with medications that your veterinarian can prescribe or dispense. A consultation with a veterinary neurologist may be recommended. In the meantime, begin a Seizure Log. For every event, record the time, duration, diet, medications, supplements and activity before and after. This may help your vet diagnose the underlying cause

I'm so sorry about your dog. I know this is a very scary time. There are multiple causes of seizures. I'm not sure how old your dog is, but in dogs under 5 years old who are completely normal in between seizure episodes, epilepsy is the primary cause of seizures. In older dogs it could be inflammation, a brain tumor, and infection or problems with the organs (particularly the liver). I always recommend blood work first to look for any problems there. If the blood work is normal, the next step is to evaluate the brain by doing an MRI. If blood work has not been done, I would highly recommend it. If problems are found in the blood work, then you should treat that. If everything is normal in the blood work, I would recommend starting seizure medication. Some dogs will have seizures very infrequently like your dog started out. Those dogs don't usually need medication. But when they become more frequent and are clustering (multiple in a 24 hours period) then I would definitely recommend medication at this point. There are multiple different seizure medications to choose from, so talk to your veterinarian about that. Many times the seizures will be manageable with medications, but it takes consistent medication multiple times per day and blood rechecks for the drug levels. Honestly, some dogs will be very difficult or impossible to control and will continue to have seizures despite being on multiple medications. So to answer your question, yes, there is something you can do to help your pet and based on the number of seizures he is now having, he needs to be put on medication. I hope this helps!

Thank you for submitting your question regarding Labra. It is worrisome that she is still having such frequent seizures. You may want to consider a board certified neurologist. Imaging and testing of her brain will ensure there is not an underlying cause giving her seizures. Next, she will likely need additional seizure medications to help control her condition. There are many options that can be tried. It is important to decrease the seizure frequency. I hope this information helps!

Seizure disorders are highly unpredictable and there could be many hormonal, environmental or dietary changes which could contribute to increased or decreased frequency. Keeping a diary of changes in routine and behavior changes can be helpful but in most cases possible triggers or positive and negative factors are never identified. Keep going as you are!

You can certainly try it but they don't always help. You may also want to talk to your vet about prescribing him Purina Neurocare. I have seen dogs have a decrease in the frequency of seizures while on this food. If he is having a lot of seizures, I would also talk to your vet about an anti-seizure medicine to help prevent them. Start a seizure log if you haven't already to keep up with the date, time and length (actual convulsing part) of the seizures. This will help you to look for trends and if they are becoming longer or more frequent. If you give him any type of flea and heartworm prevention, I would just avoid trifexis and comfortis as both of these have a tendency to lower the seizure threshold. I hope this helps!

One of the medical indications for spaying is indeed idiopathic seizures. Sexual hormones do have an impact on brain cell excitability and seizures. Estrogen is consistently found to increase susceptibility to seizures. So spaying is recommended.

Poor Tails. Understandibly you have been researching the possible causes of Tail's condition, however, as a lay person you need to be careful about what you read. Border collie collapse syndrome is a disease specifc to border collies, and Tails is a sheltie not a collie. Moreover, seizuring is very different to collapsing. If you know he is seizuring as opposed to collapsing then the most likely reason in his case is idiopathic epilepsy. It is common enough in Shelties and he is around the right age for normal onset. Seizuring can have a large oal on a dog and make their moid change afterwards and effect their muscles. I would give the phenobarbitol a chance to work, it does take a while to load in the system. If you have reason to believe that Tails is not actuallly seizuring but is collapsing I would discuss this with your vet as it is caused by different conditions entirely such as heart, lung or blood issues.