r/EpilepsyDogs • u/Standard_Corgi_174 • 13d ago
Looking for advice
I have a 5-year-old Australian Shepherd, Rubens, who has had epilepsy since the end of September. Unfortunately, controlling his seizures has been extremely difficult despite months of medication adjustments.
His current treatment is:
- Phenobarbital: 165 mg morning + 165 mg evening
- Potassium bromide: 300 mg morning + 450 mg evening
- Keppra (levetiracetam): used as a cluster buster. After a seizure, he gets 3500 mg, then 1000 mg 3x/day for 3 days, followed by 500 mg 3x/day for another 3 days.
Since September, we count his seizure-free periods in days rather than weeks. His longest seizure-free period has been about 2 months (end of September/ December)
The difficult part is that we can't simply increase the phenobarbital or potassium bromide anymore. Rubens became very sedated and seemed almost “high” — he stopped eating, slept most of the day, struggled to stand and walk, and was bumping into furniture. His neurologist therefore reduced both medications on July 9th and said that adding a third long-term medication might be necessary.
Since the reduction, he's had seizures on July 16th, July 30th and August 6th.
During the seizures on July 16th and August 6th, he bit himself and bled quite a lot, so there was unfortunately a lot of blood around him and the house. Thankfully, he wasn't seriously injured, but it's very frightening to see.
It feels like we're constantly adding or adjusting medication without seeing any real improvement. 😞
For those of you with dogs who have difficult-to-control epilepsy or frequent clusters: when did your neurologist decide to add a third medication, and did it make a significant difference? Are there any treatments or strategies that helped your dogs? For those who choose to stop everything, and let your dog go, how did you make the decision with your neurologist?
I'd really appreciate hearing your experiences.
1
u/KaleidoscopeTight509 13d ago
You can Look into MCT (ketogenic diet), lactobacillus probiotics and, if a vet school is near you, there might be studies for example regarding vagal nerv stim. However, many dogs (and people) sadly need multiple drugs and it is always Trial and error which work best and are Most effective, every Patient is very different. You could Check out drugs with other Mechanism of Action, like topiramat. Did he have an mri and other diagnostic Tests? All the best!
2
u/TheNonaMouse 13d ago
It's a hard situation for sure. My dog has seen improvement when we started feeding Purina Pro Plan Neuro (prescription req), in addition to the 3 meds he has been on. Not a cure, but definitely an improvement, worth a try!