Expected Recovey Time and Outcome

[adraz]

Background:  I have a 1 year & 1 month old poodle named Franklin.  While I was out of town and my husband was home with him he had 2 seizures over the night on a Wednesday and possibly 1 during the middle of the night on the Tuesday night before.  He was immediately taken to the vet on Thursday morning and I believe had one seizure there.  They treated him with Diazepam (Valium) and after spending the day under observation sent him home with additional doses to be given.  He was to return the next morning after fasting for additional testing.  During the night, after his meds, he had 8-10 additional seizures.  In the morning after going back to the vet, he had 3 more.  She started him on an IV of anti-seizure meds to quickly get them into his system and then prescribed phenobarbital 2 times a day for the next two weeks so that we can get everything under control to run the additional test needed.  

I brought him home that afternoon and he has been seizure free thus far.  He is sleeping a lot and when he is up he paces through the house.  He is having accidents in the house with urination, because I have not figure out a specific pattern to taking him out yet.  

He has always been an attention seeking pet, always wanting to be petted and to play and I realize he is not going to be himself after all he as been trough.  Currently, he does not seem to know his name when called nor does he know who we are.  He does not follow any of his commands.

So my questions are: Is this permanent? How long is cognitive recovery from this type of seizure activity, if at all?  Is it possible that he will ever recover, mentally, to some sort of his normal self?  Typically, how long does it take.  Is there anything I should be doing to  help him to recall his name, who we are and anything thing else that he knew and was like prior to the seizures?

My heart is breaking that I was not here for him when this all happened and I had hope that he would have some comfort in knowing I was home and with him.  I also want to thank all who respond in advance for any information and advice you can offer.

[marthaah000]

Sorry also something that I wanted to add was that recovery takes about 2-7 days, and something you can do to help is try to "reteach" them any tricks or rules. Whenever they have a lot of seizures they forget stuff that they had learned kind of recently, they will get their memories back but it helps a lot if you reintroduce it.

[adraz]

Thank you...I am really working on name recognition at the moment and being slow and gentle so not to startle him until he is familiar with us again.

[marthaah000]

Hi! I have a German Shepherd that suffers from seizures, he has idiopathic epilepsy. He takes 300g of Zonisamide twice a day, personally phenobarbital causes those side effects as well to my dog. He forgot his name, forgot house manners like not eating from the trash, he didn't recognize my parents and he also hated to be petted. As soon as the phenobarbital was out of his system (which took him about 3 days) he went completely back to normal. Every dog is different and you have to try a lot of anti seizure medications to find the right one, for my dog its zonisamide. I would just be patient with him, the medications confuse him and he's also restless because he's scared another seizures will happen in any moment. I hope your dog gets better, I know it's heartbreaking but they count on us

[adraz]

Thank you...he is on the phenobarbital to try and keep him seizure free until we can complete his testing in 2 weeks.  After that I think the vet would like to see if something else would work but could not do testing as the levels she would be looking for would be elevated by the cluster of seizures he had.  So we are being patient and loving fur baby parents for the moment.

[ginger899]

I don't have personal experience of a dog with seizures, so am sorry I don't know enough about it to give you much helpful advice.

But you might find this interesting and hopefully helpful to read:
http://www.canine-epilepsy-guardian-angels.com/behavioral.htm

Apparently it is very common for a dog to show unusual and even worrying behaviour after a seizure/seizures.

I do hope your dog will be okay and a solution will be found. If he is epileptic he will have to stay on medication but could live a good happy life.

I do hope so. I also hope someone else with more experience will be able to help you with your question.

[adraz]

Thank you.  

[adraz]

Again, thank you.  I have spent quite a lot of time reading over their website and have also contacted them to ask additional questions.  I have found much peace of mind from both this website and theirs and truly appreciate all the valuable information and support I have found in such a short period of time.