My dog Rose also has seizures. The first time I noticed something happening was when she'd "zone out" and shake her head slightly from side to side. Then she had her first grand mal seizure when she was about 4 years old. She loses all control, paddles her feet, drools, and loses bladder function.

When I took her to the vet, they ran a full blood workup on her and found nothing out of the ordinary other than she was hypothyroid. We treated her for that, but the seizures kept happening, so they added phenobarbitol. The problem with phenobarbitol is that it can cause liver damage over time. At my suggestion, the vet also prescribed potassium bromide (KBr). We tried to get her on KBr only, but she was having too many seizures.

Lately, she has had some breakthrough seizures and the vet found her thyroid levels to be too low again. We increased her thyroid medication and she's been seizure free for the last month or so.

I found a website that was helpful in the early stages of this: www.canine-epilepsy.com. There are others, just Google canine epilepsy and they'll come up. There are several sites to which veterinarians or veterinary schools contribute - those are the best.