Did our Border Collie have an Epileptic seizure?

Its been a minute since i last posted and i thought that a little update on my dogs would be a nice way to start back. This post will be about Bella and an experience we had with her a couple of weeks ago.

Picture the scene.. the evening is like many others, we allow the dogs to roam up and down the stairs as Bella especially likes to relax on our bed at every opportunity. Over recent weeks as i am drying my hair in the room next door, she brings a toy in and asks me to play catch, needless to say it takes considerably longer to dry my hair! This particular evening she was just sniffing around the room having a little nosy when she came past me with her face to the floor and back end in the air, kind of like a downward dog but she was pushing herself along the carpet. She started to raise her front paws but then seemed like she was struggling with herself to put them down, at first i thought maybe she had a piece of cotton caught on her from one of my clothes and she was trying to get it off but you could see the confusion in her eyes and that's when alarm bells started ringing, she was trying to walk but her legs were all over the place, crossing each other and just not seeming to have a clear direction, imagine stumbling home after one too many, and then imagine a dog doing that and you get a good idea of how it looked. By this point i was starting to panic, Bella was starting to tremor a little and i was trying to reassure her while trying to keep some level of calm and composure myself. I sat with her and kept her in one spot while i tried to fathom what was going on. I called my partner upstairs and let her walk to him so he could see it too, we decided to call the Vet. It was around 10pm so we got through to the receptionist who i frantically spilled out every detail in a continuous stream of word vomit and when she finally got a word in, said she would get the on call Vet to ring back.

We sat with Bella while we waited and we got her up to see if she was any better, and with the exception of my panic probably freaking her out (i know i know, big nono from me) she seemed as she was before, she was walking fine and she jumped on the bed as normal. Now that i wasn't on the verge of ugly crying that my dog was dying on the spot, the question came of "what the hell was that?"

The Vet was extremely informative and reassuring, based on the information we had given her and the fact that Bella episode's lasted only a few minutes before her returning to normal she deduced that Epilepsy could be the culprit, although she was by no way diagnosing on the spot. Apparently Epilepsy is a more common affliction in Border Collies than that of other breeds and tends to present itself between 6 months and 6 years of age. Bella is 3 so would fit right in with that age range. We were advised to keep a close eye on her for 24-48 hours and should she have another episode within that time to bring her straight in as it is cause for concern for suspected seizures to happen so close together. Another thing we were told to do is to film anything that happens again so that the Vet can get a clearer idea of what may be the cause, other than that it was just a case of waiting.

I took her to work the next day

We did watch a couple of videos of dogs having epileptic episodes and the behaviours do vary slightly depending on the dog and of course the level of severity, but all of the owners behaved in the same manor of making sure the dog was in a safe area and just sitting with them for comfort until the moment passed. They say that the dog doesn't feel pain and may not even remember what happened after, but for some i'm sure the experience is quite scary.

We also believe that another possibility could have been low blood sugar but at the moment and i hope moving forward it was just an isolated incident, it has been a number of weeks and she has been nothing but her usually energetic self.

Has anyone got a dog that suffers with Epilepsy who can relate to our experience, or has anyone had a similar situation happen to them and been given a diagnosis? I would be interested to hear peoples thoughts on this and any advice as always is much appreciated.