Seizures

Pet Seizure Treatment at Animal Emergency Care of Braselton

Any emergency symptoms in a pet are grounds for concern, but few are as frightening as seizures. If your pet experiences a seizure, it’s important to know whether that seizure is its own problem or part of a larger underlying emergency condition — and it’s critical to seek immediate care from an experienced emergency clinic. Here at Animal Emergency Care of Braselton, we have the skill, experience and expertise to treat seizures and any associated medical conditions promptly and effectively. If your pet has a disorder such as epilepsy, we can also counsel you on how to respond to a seizure in progress.

Causes of Seizures in Animals

Animals can experience seizures for a wide range of possible reasons, just as humans can. One condition humans and pets can have in common is idiopathic epilepsy, or epilepsy that has no known cause. This condition may be heredity, with some breeds more prone to it than others (including Beagles, Dachshunds and German Shepherds). A pet with this condition may have his first seizure during the first year of life or several years into adulthood. Other causes of seizures may include:

• Head trauma
• Brain tumor
• Heat stroke
• Poison ingestion

It’s worth noting that these causes may include other immediate threats to your pet’s health that require emergency intervention.

What to Expect Before, During and After a Pet Seizure

Your pet may exhibit behavioral changes just before a seizure strikes, appearing nervous, fearful or restless. Shaking or salivating may also occur. The seizure itself may last only a few seconds or as long as 5 minutes, presenting symptoms such as apparent hallucinations or (in a full-blown grand mal seizure) collapse, leg paddling, salivating and loss of bladder or bowel control. Your pet does not actually experience pain during these episodes; after the seizure, however, he may continue to salivate and exhibit signs of confusion, disorientation or agitation. Some seizures are even followed by temporary blindness.

Emergency Care from Our Braselton Team of Veterinarians

While any health condition that produces a seizure as a side effect can be sufficient grounds to bring your pet to Animal Emergency Care of Braselton, any seizure that lasts more than 5 minutes is an automatic emergency. This situation, known as status epilepticus, can cause brain damage or even death unless it is stopped in time. Our Braselton veterinarians can administer anti-seizure medications to interrupt such an attack and save your pet’s life. We may also recommend anti-seizure drugs to animals suffering from idiopathic epilepsy if they tend to have frequent or multiple seizures. If your pet suffers from a life-threatening condition such as heat stroke, poisoning or a head injury, our experienced team can treat those emergencies as well, relieving associated seizures in the process.

If your pet has a seizure, call (470) 209-7222 for instructions or bring him to your friends at Animal Emergency Care of Braselton. We’re always ready to help!

One of the scariest things to see is your pet having a seizure. There’s no such thing as typical seizures, but if your pet suddenly falls sideways, jerks uncontrollably and is unresponsive, it’s likely a seizure. Our veterinarians at Animal Emergency Care in Braselton can help.

How to Recognize Seizures

If your pet has already had a seizure, the next one will look similar. Just like seizures in people, some pets have auras that precede the full-blown seizure. Behaviorally he or she may stick uncharacteristically close to you or otherwise seem nervous. As the seizure progresses, he or she may move her legs as if swimming, clench the jaw, foam at the mouth, jerk, convulse and lose control of the bowels and bladder.

What Should You Do?

Seizures can be emergencies that require intervention at our emergency care clinic. Sometimes one seizure is the predecessor of several in a row and it takes medication to bring your pet back into control.  Also, the longer the seizure lasts the more dangerous it is since his body will rapidly heat up from physiological stress and he may have trouble breathing.

What Causes Seizures?

Any of the following can be a catalyst for seizures:

• Ingesting poisonous substances
• Liver disease
• Kidney disease
• Head injury
• Stroke
• Cancer
• Encephalitis
• High or low blood sugar

Kinds of Seizures

Seizures can be one of four types: grand mal, focal, psychomotor or idiopathic. A grand mal seizure is the scariest to see and occurs when electrical impulses go awry in the entire brain. A focal seizure affects only part of the brain and with a psychomotor seizure, the pet does something atypically odd such as chase her tail. Finally, the idiopathic seizure does not have a defined cause.

Treatment

When you bring your pet to our emergency care, our vet will perform a physical and take blood to find the source of the seizures. He or she may also prescribe common seizure medications of either phenobarbital or potassium bromide to prevent more seizures, which must then be given for life.

If you suspect your pet is having or has had a seizure, the vets here at Animal Emergency Care of Braselton are here to perform a competent and comprehensive workup to find their source and successfully treat your pet.

Please call 470-209-7222 to learn more about seizures.