I'll make a long story short.
My 13 year old Barney has been having tremors lately and my vet thought it was a slipped disk but that he was stable enough to be rested conservatively. I scheduled a consult with my other dog Teddy's neurologist for early December.
But, last night it got worse, and he had around 20 or 25 of these episodes. He fell forward at one point into his water bowl. I spoke to a couple of friends from YT (you know who you are
) and they strongly pushed me out the door - I was finding it a tough situation to judge, for a variety of reasons. We took him to the nearest vet school and he was admitted for observation and a neurological workup.
Barney is having focal seizures. They said it could be crypogenic seizures meaning that if we did more tests we would find nothing. It also could be a brain tumor, but his neurological exam didn't show anything so the doctor was leaning toward just late onset seizures. For now, because he is stable, we opted to take him home and try him on the same anti-seizure medicine that teddy takes, which also was recommended for Barney.
We are hoping that the symptoms Barney has improve before our consult with Teddy's neurologist. We don't think we would try to treat a brain tumor, so we are going that the focal seizures are able to be controlled with this medication. I don't know if I want to know that it's a brain tumor (what would I do??)
Keep little Barney in your prayers. The good news is that he is off crate rest, my vet was wrong about the neck pain so Barney isn't jailed. The neurologist said to keep him away from stairs or pools or other dangers as we would with any seizure dog. We just want Barney to have a good quality of life for at least 5 more years!!