UPDATE

My dog just had two grand mal seizures, 15 minutes apart. I hope that that's it for today. I am definitely going to try to get in with my vet tomorrow and talk to her about medication. I can't take the stress of all this and I would hate for my dog to get hurt. She had the second seizure while awake and that scares me even more. It started as she was walking down the stairs and fell down the rest of them. Luckily it wasn't far and the stairs were carpeted but I feel like this is becoming more than I can handle.



My 4 year old dog had her first grand mal seizure over the summer and then had one every month or so. I started tracking them in November and since then, she's been having them every 2 weeks.

After her first seizure, we rushed her to the vet and were told it could either be a one-time occurrence or that she could start having them regularly. The second seizure she had, we rushed her to the vet again and got blood tests done, all came back normal. We discussed medication with the vet and were told that since her seizures didn't last long enough to cause damage and since the medication had serious side effect, that we should only consider medication if the seizures seriously impacted our lives and we felt like they were more than we could handle.

Without medication, the episodes are fully over in 5 minutes and any risks are from her injuring herself during the episodes. Meaning we have to make sure she doesn't bang against furniture or fall down stairs.

With medication, she would have the side effects from the medication and would also have to have blood tests every 6 months to make sure the medication isn't compromising her organs.

So here's my dilemma: Apart from those 5 minutes every 2 weeks, my dog is as great as ever and I would prefer not to put her on medication for all the reasons listed above. The problem I'm having is that she always has the seizures when she's sleeping and now I'm insanely anxious whenever it gets to that 2 week mark and every single noise wakes me up at night because I think she's having a seizure; seeing her sleep makes me anxious because I think she could have a seizure any minute.

I don't know if anyone has been through something like this before, but I really need some advice as to how to get over my anxiety or what I can do to make these seizures more manageable, hopefully without medicating my dog.

We're not quite sure what my dog is, we got her at a local shelter and she doesn't quite look like anything in particular but we were told the mother was a boston terrier x border collie. The vet didn't give us anything for the seizures, she just said to make sure she didn't hurt herself and that if the seizures were only once a month (which they were at the time), that we should hold back from medicating. Now that they are more often, I think we will have to revisit the option of medicating.

I feel really awful to treat her the way I do... if we're home alone, I try to keep her awake and at night, every little noise wakes me up and my mind starts running.

How has the medication affected your dog?? I'm worried that figuring out the dosage is going to be trial and error and we're going to turn my dog into a zombie

My dog hasn't had any cluster seizures, just the one every 2 weeks... should I expect her condition to progress to cluster seizures or are they two separate things?