[aimee]

Hi M&C,

Since I myself had a dog with seizures I thought I’d share what I learned. She had her first partial seizures, meaning she didn’t lose consciousness. at 9 months. As I recall, vets broadly rank possible causes based on age with toxicity (ingested or metabolic) and infections being more common in very young dogs, a genetic cause being more in a young adult, and tumors or other metabolic cause from organ dysfunction. more common in middle aged to older adults

I consulted a neurologist. and together we decided not to start her on medication. I did not change her diet. For the most part, her seizures occurred when relaxed in the car. The neurologist suspected a noise induced component (apparently engine noise can cause seizures in some dog) combined with the brain waves pattern in light sleep. I also consulted with a holistic vet. I was told she was seizing in response to negative energy I had from having to get up early on the days we traveled. That was the first and last time I ever consulted a holistic vet.

Her seizure frequency was greatly reduced by preventing her from dozing during travel. She also had seizures not associated with travel. The general guidance I was given for deciding when a seizure disorder should be medicated is if they were occurring more than once a month, if there were multiple seizure in a day or if any one seizure was of longer duration. Apparently, the more seizures a dog has, the more established that brain pattern becomes and the more refractory they become to responding to anti-convulsant, so it is better to start medication early in the course of the disease if they meet the criteria. She stated to seizure more frequently and I decided the time had come to put her on meds but I was neglectful in getting her back to the vet and after several months of increased frequency the dang things just stopped.

What I learned is that seizure patterns sometimes have no pattern. It can be easy to ascribe triggers to things that had no bearing on their cause or to credit interventions with decreasing seizures when in reality the intervention had no effect. My understanding is that CBD. is an established treatment for a particular type of seizure in children and its use is being evaluated in dogs. As I recall the doses tested with marginal to no effectiveness have been about 20-40 times higher than the supplements marketed for pet owners. Personally, I think if you are supplementing with an OTC CBD oil it will have no real benefit, but if not well made could bring ham.so I think it was a good decision to remove it to see if it is playing a role in the increased liver enzymes.