Scary Morning

[Blitzen]

I have 3 dogs:
1 German Sheperd - 3 years old (Dexter)
1 Belgian Sheperd - 18 months old (Jazz/Jasmine)
1 Akita Inu - 1 years old (Sam)
I have had GSD's ever since i was 9 and it is a fact that large breed dogs do tend to get epilepsy in the latter years.

Scary i know, but they are always fine a few hours afterwards.

(with those kinds of dogs, especially the dominance and size of the Akita, as she is MAHOOSIVE, it's hard to believe that my 10 year old cat, is the boss of them all!)

[jimborae]

Fritz and Sultan sound fantastic! do you have any pics? yep your right, the fur kills hoovers! and he makes himself sneeze sometimes when he's trying to clean himself, which is comical Your so right about GSD! and Max would of made a fantastic policeman, he won't have the cats malarkeying about ( malarkey is ok if it's Max initiated ) he doesn't like it if we play fight, he'll sit in the middle to stop it he does make me laugh, proper character. And nope you don't get that type of unconditional love from a cat or person, a dog is selfless ( unless scoff is involved lol )

...........

These are pictures of Fritz as puppy and a bit older. Dont laugh at the picture with me in it, i was only 14/15 and it was the 80's!






I don't have any of Sultan right now, I'll have to go hunting for them later. Sultan had a very different personality to Fritz because of being brought up in the Police. First off he treated our house and home like a kenel and showed no personality really for nearly six months! We may as well have not existed, then slowly he started to come out of he shell & showed his true personality.

Secondly because he was brought up in male dominated environment he was completely sexist. Dad was number one & his favourite person in the whole wide world. I was then a close second, both of us were obeyed no matter what. Mum & my sister may as well have not existed as far as he was concerned and the only time he paid attention to them was if they had food! This upset my Mum greatly as with Fritz, Dad & I had to be obeyed but he loved Mum the most. Sultan's sexism never left him bless his heart

Third, again because of Police training, his favourite place in the whole wide world was the back of a white desiel van. We once lost him at home, nowhere to be seen, and it wasn't till my friend left to go home that we found Sultan. He'd jumped in through my friend's open van door window and was sound asleep in the back. Yep you guessed it, it was a white Ford Escort desiel van!

Lastly men in dark uniforms were always friendly as far as he was concerned, again a Police thing.

P.S. because of his training when we first got him we were given a list of commands or phrases which we should never use when he was in ear shot. Such as "hold him" or "bring him down" etc the consequences could be dangerous as we found out one time when we had friends round. Dad was speaking to another chap and was having a friendly argument as said "Hold it" quite forcefully. Sultan was half asleep nearby, suddenly he lept up and clamped down on the man's arm. Not hard enough to do damage but enough to cause pain. Luckily he released on command and everyone thought it quite amusing. He was a fantastically trained dog on & off the lead but you did have to be careful sometimes but quite quickly he forgot most of his aggressive training as we never encouraged it.

[shelley bda]

Aww those are gorgeous pics thank you! ( and I make no comment about your funky yellow jumper! )

They sound like fantastic Dogs! a lot of Police Dogs are also family pets as well but any routine can be hard to adjust too for human and animal after so long

It's true GSD's seem to have a "favourite" in the house, Max's is Jon, followed by me, then Mikey, then Luke, he ignored Luke for a long while, while Mike was occasionally allowed to stroke him,

Max also likes a Man in uniform, I can remember carrying him down the road not long after we had him, and a Police car stops me, wanting a look and asking if I wanted to donate him lol as soon as the window wound down, Max jumped in the car and straight onto the Policemans lap I seemed to be stalked by that copper for a while, eveytime I was out with Max he'd be about lol Then Max took a shine to the Dog Warden, who came out to see a stray Jon had picked up! Max wouldn't leave his side, then when he went back to his van to make a call, Max followed him out and sat himself in the passenger seat

Definately a Mans Dog for Men though he does like Mummy cuddles

[shelley bda]

Max had another two fits last night... Just got back from the Vets and he's diagnosed Epilepsy He's taken blood, to confirm that theres no underlying problems with his organs, will get the results on Wednesday In the meantime he's been started on low dosage tablets to be taken twice a day

[pollaxe]

Sorry to hear it Shelley, I'm sure the meds will sort him out.

[shelley bda]

Sorry to hear it Shelley, I'm sure the meds will sort him out.

I'm sure they will and I know he's in excellent hands under our Vet

[Funkstar]

Oh dear Shelley, sorry to hear that.

Hopefully he will be better on medication though. At least they can treat it.

[jimborae]

Fingers crossed for Max, shelley.

[shelley bda]

Thanks guys i'm just happy knowing the cause now, and it being treated...Max is also insured so it's nice being able to say to the vet that he can issue whatever treatment necessary, he's talking of MRI scan, so we shall see.

Got a wobbly Dog for a few days while he gets used to these tablets.

[Lee H]

I hope he gets well and the wobbling goes soon

We've got my girlfriends dog back with us at the moment and he's a right little softy who only seems to like Males and loves to play with my feet. When I say play, he actually loves sitting on my foot and fits on there as he's tiny.

Harry is a Papillon, but he looks a little bit demented and tends to look like spike from the gremlins (before they changed to the green monsters that is ) and always flicks his tongue out like a lizard as if he's tasting the air.

[shelley bda]

Harry sounds cool small Dogs tend to freak Max out....It's like he can't work them out, he can see they aren't a cat, that's about it lol

I like Papillons... much cooler than a Chihuahua

[watforddude]

We have 4 GSD's and during these last couple of days we have had to give one of them a doggy style diazapam to keep her for stressing becuase last year she did something very similar to what you where describing and it is horrible. Not as bad as when one of our dogs back legs went

[shelley bda]

We have 4 GSD's and during these last couple of days we have had to give one of them a doggy style diazapam to keep her for stressing because last year she did something very similar to what you where describing and it is horrible. Not as bad as when one of our dogs back legs went

Awww I hope she will be ok! I hated seeing Max on diazapam... took him off it after 3 days, was awful to watch. He's on epiphen now, will be on them for life. He's going through the wobbly phase, but the Vet said that it will only be until his body gets used to it. It won't stop the fits but they will be less frequent and less severe. It's just a case now of finding the right dosage for him, which means lots of trips to the Vets initially.

Is your other dog ok now? it's a worrying thing. We took Max about 6 months ago, because we thought his back legs were going, Vet said normal wear and tear luckily...

[circuitmonkey]

Sorry to hear about Max, he is a beautiful dog and I hope my experience with an epileptic black lab might be of some help.

Her name was Diefa and lived to a ripe old age, but her fits started when she was very young.
It was very scary to watch at first and not know what was going on, but we too had a very good vet who diagnosed her and got her on medication (I'm afraid I don't recall which it was), this didn't stop the fits but did bring down the frequency of what where called grand-mal fits.

A couple things that we noticed and where advised by our vet to look out for:
She use to get extreeeeemely clingy just before the fits and at this time we would switch off any appliance making noise, reduce the amount of light in the room and get my younger sisters away (always upset them). We did this because we where advised that the fits where like the wiring in her brain getting mixed up and sensory overload whilst she was fitting typically resulted in more sever fits. for the same reason if she was standing when she started to fit (she would normally lean up against either myself or my mother) we'd lay her in the middle of the room and leave her to it, we'd only pin her down if she where likely to knock into something.
Like previously mentioned (sorry to lazy to quote the original poster) flickering lights where normally the trigger for the fits, in our case it was the fish tank.

Hopefully you'll learn to live with it and both you and your dog will be very happy, it got to be none issue for our family, use to freak the hell out of any visitors though!

[watforddude]

Awww I hope she will be ok! I hated seeing Max on diazapam... took him off it after 3 days, was awful to watch. He's on epiphen now, will be on them for life. He's going through the wobbly phase, but the Vet said that it will only be until his body gets used to it. It won't stop the fits but they will be less frequent and less severe. It's just a case now of finding the right dosage for him, which means lots of trips to the Vets initially.

Is your other dog ok now? it's a worrying thing. We took Max about 6 months ago, because we thought his back legs were going, Vet said normal wear and tear luckily...

Yeah she is fine now, its becuase of the fireworks and she cant cope with anything loud and completely stresses her out so the vet gave us the doggy type form of diazapam to keep her chilled out, it worked very well becuase normally when i come in through the back door shes going wild, but i came in and i though she was dead.

and im very sorry to hear about your dog! only good thing he can still live a completly normal life, but im sure the amount of vet trips he will have will soon add up.

[Zak33]

Sorry to hear about Max, he is a beautiful dog and I hope my experience with an epileptic black lab might be of some help.

Her name was Diefa and lived to a ripe old age, but her fits started when she was very young.
It was very scary to watch at first and not know what was going on, but we too had a very good vet who diagnosed her and got her on medication (I'm afraid I don't recall which it was), this didn't stop the fits but did bring down the frequency of what where called grand-mal fits.

A couple things that we noticed and where advised by our vet to look out for:
She use to get extreeeeemely clingy just before the fits and at this time we would switch off any appliance making noise, reduce the amount of light in the room and get my younger sisters away (always upset them). We did this because we where advised that the fits where like the wiring in her brain getting mixed up and sensory overload whilst she was fitting typically resulted in more sever fits. for the same reason if she was standing when she started to fit (she would normally lean up against either myself or my mother) we'd lay her in the middle of the room and leave her to it, we'd only pin her down if she where likely to knock into something.
Like previously mentioned (sorry to lazy to quote the original poster) flickering lights where normally the trigger for the fits, in our case it was the fish tank.

Hopefully you'll learn to live with it and both you and your dog will be very happy, it got to be none issue for our family, use to freak the hell out of any visitors though!

very good post. It echoes my sentiments too in an earlier one. Fish tanks lights OR buzzing is a prime issue.

The tablets will sort him out Shelley, but don't be tempted to take him off them too soon.... if it's for life... it's for life