2-minute dog trainer -- starting over :-(

I’m bereft. My sweet boy Tempest lost his battle with epilepsy yesterday.

I know more about canine epilepsy than I ever wanted to. Seems there are several levels of severity with epilepsy. These include but are not limited to:

-  irregularly spaced (weeks to months) single seizures.

- regularly spaced (weeks to months) single seizures.

- irregularly spaced cluster seizures (clusters are multiple events w/in 24 hrs).

- regularly spaced cluster seizures

- status epilepticus (seizures occurring back-to-back over a period of 30+ minutes, with no recovery between) which are life-threatening and can result in brain damage due to prolonged oxygen deprivation.

I’ve learned that no one really knows why epilepsy occurs, there are no cures, there are some paths to management which occasionally work all the time with some dogs, some of the time with some dogs, and not at all with some dogs.

My poor, sweet, buddy-boy Tempest had two single seizures at age 15 months and 16 months. Then, at age 21 months, he had his first status epilepticus.

Ten seizures in a 55-minute period left him unconscious as we arrived at the emergency vet’s office. I was certain he had died as he went silent for the last 10 minutes of the drive.

The emergency vet sent him into an unconscious state. Every time he started coming out of unconsciousness he’d begin thrashing and she’d give him more drugs.

The next day was a hellish experience. I rushed my moaning boy to my vets office first thing in the morning and Tempest struggled to regain consciousness. One young lady in my vet’s office spent several hours holding him on her lap. We were hoping to catch him before he began to seize again, and allow him to come out of anesthesia.

My gut told me he was finished. My vet begged me to give medicine a chance.

Tempest recovered from that hellish experience but was never the same. I believe he had some brain damage, he had some loss of vision that never returned, and he just wasn’t “himself.” A mom knows.

Over the next 2 months we tried to establish a “new normal,” but every 2 weeks we had a seizure event. We’d just recover from one and have another.

Stressors, including being crated in the car, house, or training building, tended to trigger seizures. We got valium tablets and Rescue Remedy. Tempest’s seizures cause me to be hyper-vigilant and have flashbacks. I watched him constantly. It was like living with a ticking bomb.

I tried to comfort myself with the idea that 95% of his seizures occur between 5pm and 8pm. I was especially watchful and on-edge during those hours.

Every event found me struggling with my gut, which told me we were losing the battle, and my vet / my epil-k9 list / my friends who encouraged me to keep trying.

Yesterday morning Tempest and I awoke to my cell-phone alarm telling me it was “pill time!”  Two phenobarbitol pills, and a little food, and I went to work answering e-mails and doing Saturday morning routines.

At 8am I heard him scrambling a little under my desk.  He crashed to the floor in a seizure, but I calmly held him and protected him, confident we’d have just one seizure.

He started to recover and I tried to fix him a snack when crash, he went into a second, smaller, seizure. Oh my God, I thought, he’s going into another status situation.

It wasn’t lost on me that morning seizures were not common for us. All this is running through my mind as crash, he went into seizure three while I tried to get some rectal valium into him. Bud held him and comforted him while I worked with the syringe.

We gave an extra phenobarbitol and a valium tablet, and he eventually calmed down.

I got him some bananas with maple syrup on them, but he couldn’t eat. I tried 15 minutes later and he ate his treat. Half an hour later he took some water. Half an hour later he had some dog food.

My gut told me we’d reached the end of our journey with epilepsy. The morning seizures, the second status event, his phenobarbitol blood level numbers, all told me we were fighting a losing battle.

So I held my sweet boy, the dog of my dreams, my dog of a life-time, on the floor in the vet’s exam room. Sweet-T slipped gently into the deep sleep while I held him in my arms. Tempest’s last vision was my face, and his last puffy exhalations were felt on my lips.

My agility dreams were to step to the start line with a fearless partner. I didn’t care about Qs and placements. I just wanted a partner who was enjoying himself. Tempest was all that and more.

Canine epilepsy changed and destroyed my sweet-T. It weakened him and ruined his quality of life.

Canine epilepsy changed me and destroyed my future. I could no longer consider a future beyond getting Tempest through another day.

Today I suffer through the additional guilt from “relief from stress.” This same emotion must be felt by everyone who loses an ill loved-one. Suddenly you have time on your hands, time that you would be struggling with illness and concern.

You allow yourself an instant of relief, your guilt comes crashing in on you.

Today I also struggle to remember the lovely, sweet Tempest. When I close my eyes and think of him his last seizure is all I see, seared into my brain.

So I’m watching videos, looking and printing puppy pictures, and trying to replace the horrible mental pictures with joyous pictures.

My 2-minute dog training blog is the story of Tempest’s life. He came to me at 8 weeks and was training for 13 months using only 2-minute training protocols.

He was a puppy full of love for everyone. He loved dogs and cats alike. He would play with anyone, anytime. He was the most amazing boy. I looked forward to a future of playing with Tempest, but it was not to be.

Now, life must go on. The best I can do to prove my love for Tempest is to transfer that love, those hopes and dreams, to another agility partner.

There are millions of dogs looking for homes and my next agility dog may be from border collie rescue.

I’m not looking for another Tempest, some sort of replacement dog. That’s not possible.

But Tempest’s love for me, and his love of the game, exists in another canine form, and I’m going to seek it out.

Tags: 2-Minute puppy training, Bud Houston, dog agility, dog performance sports, Marsha Houston

This entry was posted on February 12, 2012 at 12:35 pm and is filed under canine epilepsy, loss of an agility dog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Epilepsy seizures in dogs lasting over 1 hour long

Months two, three and now four have passed us by. Time has been instrumental in getting Capone settled into the family. He is truly a “member of the family” now.

It has been over 24 hours since he had a grand mal or Status Epilepticus seizure which last over 1 hour and 30 minutes. This happened  yesterday early in the morning about 4 am. While he has been on Phenobarbital 1/2 grain (32 mg) (1.5 tablets 2 x  day) it has not been effective at controlling his seizures. After the severe Gran Mal seizure followed by a series of small seizures he went into a coma and I was able to get him to the vet who started him on IV fluids. He was given Valium (apparently that prevents seizures) and the vet brought forth the topic of putting him down if needed.

I asked the vet “How long do we wait until we know he is out of the woods?” To which she replied “24 to 48 hours. perhaps I spoke too soon.”

I thought to myself, ‘yeah, ‘. “Let’s wait”, I said.

Well, in Alabama the vets send us elsewhere to have our dog watched overnight, that being said, we transported Capone to the Emergency overnight clinic and noticed that the charges were high ~ $ 140 to stay overnight with an upward range of $ 400. But had to pay the bill as we wanted our dog watched overnight and do not have the meds and supplies to do so ourselves at home.

My husband and I just walked into the Emergency after hours clinic this morning, the vet there happily told us he had recovered and was awake!  We were preparing ourselves for the worst. Wow, miraculous recovery! It was a shock to see him, alert, chewing on his catheter (they had to change it) and we took him to the local vet yet again.

I just got off the phone with the vet, seems there are alternatives to Phenobarbital, when it is not enough to control his seizures. So, he is starting on Potassium Bromide (appears to be a very stable drug which has been used for epilepsy in dogs in the past). Loading the drug into the dog for 7 days (that means we give it to him 2 X’s a day then taper off to 1 X a day. Not sure why he was begun on Phenobarbital if Potassium Bromide exists and does not affect the liver or cause liver damage. But the good news is – there are other drugs which these dogs can take to control seizures. We now know the following:

1. If your dog’s seizure lasts more than 5 minutes call the vet


2. If the seizure is longer than 1 hour, spray him with water to protect his brain as his temperature will increase and call the vet or after hours care


3. If the goes into coma after a seizure it is to protect the dog


4. Severe attacks will cause brain damage, may affect the dog, and post phase waiting after a severe attack will take 24 – 48 hours to see if the dog recovers. So wait it out!

Second attack I have seen, glad I asked questions!

Going to run a few errands, pick up some Valium gel (apparently good thing to keep at home when the epilepsy attacks are severe, but it is expensive, like 100 dollars per syringe and we have found it helps to have 2 syringes on hand) it helps stop them  – then pick up the dog!