My Beautiful Husky Collapsed

[Aspenthehusky]

Hello everyone! First, I am glad I found this site because it has vast amounts of great information. I have run into a scary situation that I am hoping someone on here can help me out with. My 2 year old husky started to eat grass about a week ago, but she collapsed two days ago and started to try to vomit. She then went outside and then collapsed again and urinated and pooped on herself. She then let out a large sad cry. I was petting her trying to calm her down while my wife called the emergency vet. She then tried to get up and walk, but she was unable to "keep her legs up" and wobbled and fell again. She then let out another large deep cry/howl. I immediately picked her up and drove her to the Vet. They gave her an IV and did x-rays. After about two hours of receiving the IV she seemed normal, but they wanted to send her to the animal emergency room to test for "Addison's Disease". The results came back today negative for the disease, but now they do not know why she collapsed like that. She also never lost conscious throughout the ordeal.

 

She was a rescue and we only have had her for almost a year. The previous owners did not take good care of her, but we treat her as our little lady..lol

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks everyone!!

Tony

[Jay]

What was she like when she collapsed? Were her eyes open ? Did she respond to your voice, touch? Or was she in a trance like state? If the latter then it could have been a seizure. Together with the fact that she deficated and uriniated on herself makes me think that.

When my youngest Yukon had seizures he peed. And afterwards he was kind of dazed and out of breath and a little wobbly

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

[Removed #5]

In PM I asked Tony for a better location.  It helps, in what I'm thinking, if I have a better idea of where he is.

 

It may just be because these symptoms so very closely match the ones I was reading about and noted elsewhere regarding Sevin dust that I immediately jumped to an unintentional poisoning.

 

And of course, Jason's post is also to the point.

 

How's she doing now, Tony, eating, drinking, able to get around??

Edited July 22, 2014 by Al Jones

[Aspenthehusky]

I live in Georgia. She is a inside dog always, unless we are on one of our walks.  Her eyes were open throughout the episode and she was in a trance like state, but it did seem like she was responding to my touch. It does sound like she had a seizure. What medication should we put her on? Again thanks for the information/help 

[Removed #5]

Jason's pup Yukon has had seizures so I'll let him address this.  I believe Yukon is on phenobarbital which I think is prescription drug. 

Jason, was there a positive diagnosis of seizures of some type, or process of elimination along with it responding to phenobarbital.

 

Tony, are they spraying anything on the fields or have they recently?  And several of the active poisons respond to an injection of atropine.

 

Still interested in how she's doing now.  If it's a seizure she would probably be back to normal until the next one (since they don't tend to just go away);  if she's still down, I'd be more inclined to look toward unintentional poisoning.

[LightningStruck]

I don't have any advice for this, I just wanted to say that I am so sorry about your girl having health issues and that it's nice to meet you and hope you can find a little help and comfort here.

Sent from my iPhone inbetween walking dogs!

[Aspenthehusky]

My fault I should have said how she is doing now. She is somewhat back to her normal self sleeping a little bit more, but definitely doing much better.  As for the spraying the fields I am unsure because I recently returned from overseas, but my wife said the "bug" guy came out recently and sprayed our home. I hope this is not the cause because the company will have problems because they said their chemicals will not harm our dog.

 

Thanks for the help guys!!

[BingBlaze n Skyla]

Apart from the toileting on herself it sounds just like what happened to my bings , he got heat exhaustion collapsed , threw up andseemed almost dazed and took him a while to respond to me and get up he was wobbly on his legs afterwards too , he was fine after a while but still a bit wobbly on his legs for his next few walks the next day

Hope she's OK

[Jay]

Yes, Yukon is on phenobarbital, and it is only be prescription.

 

When Yukon had his first seizure it was like 10pm, so afterwards I just stayed up with him and first thing in the morning I called the vet to make an appointment.  Unfortunately, he had another one at like 7:30am the next day. 

 

The vet ran some blood tests to rule out anything medically wrong (i.e. toxins), gave me a prescription for the phenobarbital and told me that if he had a 3rd seizure to start him on it right away.  Usually if they have a seizure it is a isolated incident but if they have more than 2 within 6 months then they should be medicated. 

 

The next night, about 2:30am he had his 3rd seizure.  I immediately started him on the phenobarbital the next morning.  He hasn't had any seizures since (around the 1st of November 2013).  His blood tests all came back fine, which meant they just diagnosed him with epilepsy. 

 

Every year they will check his phenobarbital levels to make sure he has the proper amount.  I would ask your vet about this.  I am rather surprised that they didn't mention this when you took her.  With mediciation, they can live normal lives, so it isn't something that is going to affect their quality of life.  It does take 2-4 weeks for them to adjust to the medication though.

 

I saw your update, so it is possible that it was the bug spray, and I would mention everything you can to the vet.  I kept a timeline of what happened with Yukon so they would know everything. 

 

Hope she continues to do well, keep us posted!  And if you have any questions let me know.  I know it is a scary thing.  Yukon's seizures were very violent and definiately the "grand mal" type; foaming at the mouth, heavy breathing, etc, so I know how awful it is to see.

 

Good luck, and welcome

[Removed #5]

Tony, depending on where you are in Georgia, there are several colleges / universities that have small animal clinics (small animals cat / dogs / etc; large animals horses / cows / sheep / etc).  Here in Texas, we tend to go to the University for the unknowns because they tend to have excellent teachers and students who are more apt to "think outside the box".
 
In either case ( small animal clinic or vet ) I'd ask for blood work first to exclude the obvious problems and blood work can identify a wide range of problems.  If all the blood work comes up clean, then I think they'll decide seizure and you and they can go from there.
 
The small animal clinic at the nearest agricultural college / university is quite often considerably cheaper than your vet though you may have to travel a ways.
 
University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine at Athens

Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College at Tifton

 

I'd be inclined to go with the CVM, ABAC only has an associates degree for small animals.
 

[Keeonah]

In reading through this thread I noticed that you said that she was a rescue dog. I had a rescue, Skye. Slightly different as it was me that rescued her as opposed to me getting her from a rescue centre. After having her for a while she started to have fits. Totally out of the blue with no rhyme or reason. We took her to the vets and she had all the blood tests done which came back negative. The vet asked what she had been through before I got her so I relayed the story. The vet said that she thought the "fits" were being caused by change of circumstance. i.e. she was in a better place being treated like she should be and was happy. In all she had 3 fits and has never had one since. She has since been rehomed as well and I keep up with her progress. It may be that this is the case with your girl and may pass but get the bloods done anyway just to make sure.

 

Gary.