Tremors then falls over

Hello, I have a 12 year old Pomeranian/Rat Terrier mix has recently started to kind of have slight tremor then fall over on his right side. The episodes tend to happen every couple of minutes to sometimes spacing out 15-30 minutes. He is eating and drinking, doesn't appear to be in any pain. He just paces and falls over. I am not sure he's sleeping to be honest. I took him to our family vet on Monday - he did a exam, checked his heart, lungs, temperature. No fever, heart and lungs sounded great, he have him a shot of antibiotics just in case to see if that would do any good. As of today it has not helped or made any difference. I took him to another vet on Friday and she wanted over a thousand dollars to figure out what's wrong. :( I don't have that kind of money for a guess. All that said... anyone ever had this issue before or know what in the world could be causing it? Thank you for the time and any help! :)

Hello!  Let's start by stating the obvious:  if the vet who knows the case predicts over a thousand dollars to reach the answer, nobody - and I mean, nobody - is going to reliably diagnose this case on the Internet having never seen the patient.   I can of course discuss vague possibilities for cases like that in general, but it's important to appreciate that the way to get to the bottom of such cases is to do examinations and tests to work out what is going on.   MORE TO FOLLOW

What you are describing could be neurological.  Fits, for example:  A slight 'warning period' followed by sudden collapse and unresponsiveness (this can be very short) followed by a sluggish recovery period, would be typical.  Some vets may offer referral for MRI scans to try to understand the cause (does this explain the proposed cost?) or trial epilepsy treatment to see if it made any difference.  Older dogs developing neurological symptoms often do so because of a brain tumour, for example, and an MRI scan, building on a neurological exam, would be needed to diagnose it.  However, if a brain tumour were to be found, it may not increase the available treatment options.  Your vets would be the best people to advise you on this, should fitting be their suspicion.

There are other possible medical causes, which your vet may have ruled in or out, including hypoglycaemia (the question is what would be causing that? - which makes me worry about tumours known as  insulinomas) or Addison's.  It seems unlikely that your vets are short of possible things to research that may be causing the signs; rather that the tests to tell the things apart from one another may be expensive. An excellent question for them, is: What could you diagnose that might cause these signs AND be treatable in a way that makes a big positive difference to my dog?  If they find possibilities for this, perhaps these possibilities would be most worth pursuing? It sounds like a distressing case and we wish you all the best with whatever happens next.  Please let us know how you get on!

Thank you for your response. It's definitely an odd case according to Diego's regular vet. He is going Thursday for a blood panel work up. Hopefully that will help narrow down some of the possibilities. I do not mind the expense if it's helpful. The second opinion vet seemed more to care about the money than helping my little guy.