Seeking Specialist Guidance for Our Dog’s Neurological Episodes

I’m reaching out in the hope of gaining some guidance regarding our 2-year-old Cockapoo, Dilly, who has been experiencing concerning neurological episodes. Her symptoms include:

• Stiffness, heavy breathing, and upward gazing while remaining responsive
• More recently, a fit involving muscle seizing, shaking, struggling to stand, and eventual lying down with spasms
• Consciousness during these episodes, but appearing scared, breathing rapidly, and occasionally whimpering.

Here's a video of the most recent episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh1ObF7NJwY

Hello and thank you for raising this topic.   Seizures - that is, full-on epileptic seizures, usually affect the whole brain and you'd think that they are obvious, with muscles tensing and relaxing at speed, eyes rolling back in the head, patients completely losing control of their bodies ( including their bladders ) and so on.  However, it is not uncommon to encounter dogs such as your cockapoo, exhibiting seizure-like activity but apparently retaining consciousness.   Common reasons for this do include seizure activity (that simply doesnt span the full brain), or problems with the muscles or at the neuro-muscular junction.  Some dogs, for example, suffer low blood sugar which can cause collapse or involuntary movement simply because the brain and / or muscles run out of fuel.  You may also have heard of degenerative myelopathy, a disease that involves the destruction of the sheath around the nerves and thereby causes wobbliness.   Sudden bouts of pain can also look as you've described.  Hopefully by now, Dilly has seen a vet who may ask to do tests in order to establish what is going on; once a probable diagnosis has been raised, it may be a good time to ask about the normal progression of the disease, potential treatments and, of course, whether tests or scans may be useful.  Please will you let us know how you get on?

Niamh Lingley has written  an article for our blog, called 'How Do I know if My Dog is having a Seizure?'   It sounds as though you may now be aware of all of these points, but it is a good starting place.