Cory’s Story

In England they often call them “fits” – what happens when the brain loses control of the body. In America, they are more commonly called seizures. Over the next few days, I’m going to blog about some of the many causes of dog seizures.

EPILEPSY.  The primary cause of dog seizures is epilepsy, but it is important to make the distinction that not all seizures are attributable to epilepsy.  The most common form of epilepsy was made known to the world by a group of idiots walking through the woods one day and they all found themselves on the same path, and collectively observed a wolf in a clearing doing the hokey-pokey.  They reported this unusual sighting to the forest rangers and the term “idiopathic epilepsy” was coined.  Well, that’s not exactly true, but the scientific reason is a bit more boring and doesn’t make any more sense.  In short, the term “idiopathic epilepsy” is a catch-all for when the experts just don’t know what is causing a dog to have seizures.

Check back tomorrow for another cause of dog seizures!

Cory is starting to enjoy his toys again!

Cory with a toy

I submitted my manuscript almost a month ago and am still waiting to hear back.  In the meantime, for those of you who have asked that I bring the focus of this blog back to canine epilepsy, here is a snipet from the book:

“We hoped that there would not be another seizure, but there was, not even two months after the first Grand Mal.  We took Cory to his regular vet in Seattle and explained about the 2 seizures he’d had, and we had a full work up done. Everything was negative which meant that Cory had no brain tumor, no thyroid levels off, absolutely nothing physical that could explain why he was having seizures.  So he was diagnosed as having idiopathic epilepsy, and we were advised to keep track of the seizures to see how often they were and if we could determine any possible triggers.  I, of course, became the appointed seizure keeping secretary.”

We found that it is very helpful to keep a seizure log.  For me, it helped me stay honest about the seizures because my mind wanted badly to be in denial about them.