Separation anxiety may be the most common behavioral problem in dogs. Dogs can not ask you where you are going and when you will be home. They can’t be comforted by leaving a phone number where you can be reached. If they are worriers, their only option is to worry. This can lead to behavioral problems related to their stress if they exhibit it as inappropriate defecation or destruction of your home or possessions. It is a tough situation.
A dog is a social animal. It wants to be with the family and being alone is not an entirely natural situation. Some dogs can not adjust to this situation without help. As a puppy, a dog learns that making sounds brings its mother to it. So barking, whining and crying are natural reactions when the dog wants to be reunited with its family. It may also consider digging, scratching at the door or window and other behavior designed to allow it to escape the house and rejoin its family to be “normal”. Dogs may become so anxious that they tear up objects indiscriminately, defecate or urinate without control. If a dog is punished for these actions, the resulting increase in anxiety can make the whole situation worse. It is best just to ignore the destruction if at all possible. In order to treat the disorder, it is necessary to set aside some time to figure out exactly what is happening and to help your dog adjust to separation.
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Acepromazine seems to lower the seizure threshold in some animals and can apparently allow a seizure to occur that might not have without the lowering of the seizure threshold. Paradoxically, it can raise the seizure threshold associated with some anesthetic agents (most notably ketamine).
Diazepam (Valium Rx) is helpful in reducing seizure activity in most dogs but it does have a paradoxical excitatory effect in a few animals. I don’t know if this stimulates seizure activity but it does occur.
When to medicate to control seizure activity is a really debatable question. The pro treatment side of the argument for early treatment is that “mirroring” and “kindling” of seizures are recognized in dogs. Mirroring is when an area of the brain causing seizures on one side induces the development of an area causing seizures in the same place in the other half of the brain. Kindling is the process in which seizures make it easier for other seizures to occur — in effect lowering the seizure threshold a little bit every time one happens. The con side of the argument mostly revolves around the side effects of the most consistently successful seizure control medication in dogs, phenobarbital. It can cause incoordination and a general lethargy for several weeks on first administration. Most dogs overcome these effects in a few weeks, though. It also causes increased hunger, often increased water consumption and therefore urination and it causes severe liver damage in some patients. Not many, but enough to be very worrisome.
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Dogs definitely have a wide variation in seizure activity but it is hard to say whether seizures which might not cause recognizable clinical signs occur because it is so hard to judge the mental state of the dog. I assume that almost any type of seizure possible in a human probably occurs in dogs as well, though
Most people use the terms seizure and convulsion interchangeably but it is probably more accurate to say that the seizure is the brain activity that leads to the physical symptom of convulsing.
Convulsions can occur as the result of toxins and there have been reports of them occurring due to allergies in people. I am not sure if this has been documented in dogs. If there is a problem with food or with the stuff your dog eats on her runs, allergy to a plant or a particular ingredient of the dog food is the most likely problem. In this case, changing foods will only help if the offending ingredient (like beef, chicken, food coloring, etc.) is not found in the new food.
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