Puppies, Seizures and Hockey

This afternoon I had plans to go squeeze puppies. Little black and white fuzzy sausages that have just barely opened their eyes.

But Gio changed those plans for me last night when he had another seizure, possibly two. I know the one at about 5:30am was a seizure, it was his typical grand mal. But I’m not sure exactly what was going on 2 hours earlier at 3:30am. It was windy last night, and the house creaks a lot in the wind, so at first I thought he was just reacting to odd noises around or outside the house. Gio woke me up at about 3:30am growling his “I mean business” growl. I have only ever heard that growl twice before in his life, both times he was protecting me against some perceived threat. It is very distinctive from his play growl or his “I want food” growl. But none the less, he was laying on my bed this morning growling at the bedroom door. I assumed he had just heard something blowing around outside, so calmed him down and told him to go back to sleep, which he did after a couple of minutes.

I never thought anything of it until 2 hours later when he woke me with the beginnings of a grand mal seizure. After that, I began to wonder if the growling wasn’t some sort of psychomotor seizure. Psychomotor seizures can manifest themselves in a number of ways, often frantic running without seeing what they are running into, or “fly snapping” behavior. I have heard tell that psychomotor seizures can sometimes manifest themselves in sudden aggression, and with Gio being the very non-aggressive dog that he is (to a fault), the “I mean business” growl is as close as I have seen to aggression with him. The kicker is that he was somewhat responsive during the growling session. From speaking to other people with experience with psychomotor seizures in their dogs, it doesn’t sound as if the dogs are ever responsive during the seizures. So that one is still a mystery. A theory has been proposed to me that maybe he was just a little more on-edge because he could feel the seizure coming, so reacted with a growl to normal outside wind noises. That makes a bit of sense, at least.

Either way, there was a seizure this morning and with Gio’s recent trend of having clusters of seizures, I thought it best to stay close to home today in case he had another attack. So no puppy squeazing for me this week. Hopefully I will be able to make it out for some puppy breath face time next Sunday.

This evening I did leave Gio for a short while to take Romeo to his scheduled therapy dog visit at Saskatoon City Hospital. Unfortunately, he was competing with the hockey game that was on at the time, so he got very little attention. The nurses do love to see him, though, and we always spend some time with them.