Healthy dog had a one-time seizure???????????

[call-me-ish]

Went hog hunting with a friend last week and about fifteen minutes after we put the dogs on the ground, they were roading about forty yards in front of us when a female hit the ground like she had been shot. Lying on her side, she began to paw with her front legs but was unable to raise her head or body. We approached very slowly not knowing what to expect next. Finally she staggered her way to her feet and wobbled around in circles humped-up and very disoriented. Gradually she began to bound around and resume normalcy. This all lasted maybe three minutes.

About the time we were going to load her up, the other dogs jumped a hog and she lit out to them. When the dogs bayed we sent in the catch dogs and ended up with a nice boar. The female was right in the middle of the action and has been fine since.

We told the incident to a fellow who said he had seen that happen to dogs that got into stinging nettles. Any comments?

[Diamond 7]

About 7 years ago while hunting I had a dog do that same thing. So I put the dog in the dogbox, about 30 minutes later the dog started howling and wanted to go run with the other dogs so I let him go. That dog treed with the rest of the dogs and did just fine.

About 2 months later I looked out in the kennel and saw that dog laying on the ground having another seizure, so I took him to the vet to have him checked out. The vet checked the dog out and said everything looked ok. About that time the dog had a siezure right in front of the vet. The vet said he could put the dog on a siezure meds but warned me that the dog would become very mellow. Then the vet told me to go pickup some homeopathic vitamin supplement and try that.

That didn't seem to help, and the seizures became so frequent that I gave the dog to a friend of mine that didn't hunt big game. He had the dog for a short time and said that the dog started having seizures evry time he got excited and finally died. This dog was about 4 yrs old.

[call-me-ish]

Diamond 7,
Thanks for your response. I will tell my friend about your experience.

[Steve White]

There are a lot of things that could cause a one time seizure. Poison, heat stress, blood sugar levels to name a few more common ones.

Couple years ago. Had a pup in the house that chewed on one of the house plants. The pup had a seizure right in front of me. Not a problem since. Not 100% sure it was the cause. Put the plants up higher, and never had a problem. The only one we thought it might be was some sort of defenbachia. spelling? This one kinda looks like a rubber tree. In this circumstance the plant was a smoking gun.

Can't always nail down the cause. A one time thing I would not worry to much about. More than once I would look for more answers.

[Liz ODell]

See the post " thought he was going to die".
No, it was not nettles, nettles cause a dog to start drooling first then they start to act stiff and have trouble walking then they will start to have trouble breathing and at the point that a dog starts to have trouble breathing if they are that susceptible to nettles and you don't give them a shot of epinephrine they will probably die.
I have had luck giving my dogs 2 benadryls about 1 hour before I hunt a nettle 'hole'.