Treating Seizures In Dogs

[Seamaiden]

It's been a while since I've started a thread of my own, and now I come to this great community with some questions, seeking answers.

My old dog began having grand mal seizures this last weekend, four in two days, very bad, leaving her dazed and confused for hours. Turns out she's a walker when it happens, just jumps up and starts walking, damn near impossible to stop.

We took her to the vet first thing Monday morning and the diagnosis isn't pretty--he feels as my gut told me, it's a brain tumor. He prescribed some prednisone with a very strong admonition that it is toxic to the dog and she'll experience other problems as soon as we put her on it, even though he's put her on the lowest possible dosing schedule for her size (she's just over 85lbs, which has been a trick getting her back up to that point). He said we should wait for another seizure or two before starting her on it due to its toxicity.

I asked him what he knew, if anything, about using cannabis and/or CBD oil for dogs with seizures. He was open to the idea, but felt that there was nothing to it, but go ahead if we felt it might be helpful. So I went ahead and started her on the very last of the elixir I had for my husband when we got home, instead of waiting for another seizure because of how they seem to affect her. My problem? I was scraping the bottom of the bowl so to speak.

So last night I went ahead and cooked down another batch from a jar of buds I've had soaking in grain alcohol for at least two months, probably more like 6-8 months. Cooked down just fine, but when I went to incorporate the coconut oil it never did incorporate. I now have a pot full of liquid coconut oil that won't set at room temperature, with a bottom sludge of oil/concentrate.

What should I do? I can't get it emulsified at all, the sludge just won't loosen up. I was considering adding honey but it's going to take a HUGE amount, and I'm not so sure there's added benefit here. I was also considering pouring off as much of the coconut oil as I can and then reheating the concentrated oil sludge with more coconut oil, but again, I'm just not sure what might happen.

Suggestions?

By the by, the dog hasn't had a single grand mal seizure since putting her on the oil, but she has clusters of petit mal seizures. She seems to know when they're coming because she jumps up and comes over to me, and usually within 5-10mins she's having a hard twitch. Then, after having one or a few, it's over and she's back to being Old Hazel. I've been logging everything but I can't really well log doses because I have absolutely no idea how much of any given cannabinoid is in my concoction. I will be relaying this information to the vet, because I feel it's good for him to know that you can safely give cannabis to dogs for seizures without the side effects of a medication like prednisone.

Thanks community!

 

[Midwestjay]

Sorry bout hazel. But glad you had the nerve and know-how to try something. Too bad you don't know dosages but all that matters is it helps her. Hopefully the vet actually listens and does something with the info.

 

[LittleDabbie]

So sorry about the dog...

Put the container in the freezer allow the coconut oil to solidify then scrape it out and do whatever you want with it.

The rest of the sluge heat it back up and scrape as much out as you can.. Im sure when it dry's its going to be ROCK Solid.

So....

Suggestion, Just feed her straight oil..It don't HAVE to be mixed with coconut oil..

I Licked a glass jar of pure oil and got so god damn high, Then tried again mixed with coconut oil and barley felt much.. IT was too damn diluted!

So it does work without coconut oil..

If you wanted you could heat a bit up then smear it inside the dogs mouth allowing as much surface contact as possible.

The more direct it can get into the dogs blood vs, being digested then metabolized the better imho.

 

[Stumpy420]

My Yorkie has seizures, not sure what kind, but she sits there shaking uncontrollably, after it stops her ears are pinned back. She comes to me for her daily dose of leaves, as it seems to deter them. Just leaves helps her with hers.

 

[Underthesun]

Sorry to hear about the seizures. My bloodhound used to have them as an old 8-9 year old. We weren't sure the cause of them. He takes a small dosage of phenobarbital, and when we started we had to give him large amounts, he could barely even walk for a week or so then it took another month or so for him to get back to normal. He now just takes a little dose. But he hasn't had a seizure in a year and half. Not a vet, so not saying phenobartial is your answer at all, just is our situation with our particular dog.

It sure isn't fun watching our buddies struggle, wish you the best and hope that oil works out for you.

 

[Herb Forester]

I'm surprised your vet didn't prescribe phenobarbital, it's usually the standard for idiopathic old age seizures in dogs. Long term it is bad for the liver (milk thistle might prevent/delay damage). The steroid route is usually for uncontrollable cases or imaging confirmed tumor/lesion presence. Diazepam/Valium administered rectally can be also used for acute seizure onset (like with humans esp children - but it can also have a paradoxical reaction causing anxiety and restlessness). For emergencies where vet care wil be delayed, the main thing to address besides airway/breathing/circulation is body temperature, which can get very high during status-epilepticus (seizures that won't stop). Get a vet on the phone asap if this happens, and they may advise you to use an ice water bath to bring the temp down.

As for weed you probably already noticed that canines are much more sensitive to dosage than we are, so micro-titrating slowly to tolerance is important. Tincture should be administered in drops not dropper-fulls, and is an easy way to spike their food with consistency. Main thing to watch for is dangerously slowed breathing (overdose, get to vet for monitoring and IV fluids.) Sleepiness, drooling, ataxia and generally goofy gait will be the first signs of an overly stoned dog, so they'll need some help and a protected area to rest it off. I've seen a few dogs treated effectively with cannabis for seizures, they all did great with daily dosing low enough to mostly avoid the side effects. Often as they age (or if a lesion progresses) the seizure frequency/intensity can increase, requiring re-visiting dosage parameters.

 

[smokedareefer]

theres a method called tacking where your rub the oil on the gums allowing the cannabis properties a more direct route to the receptors in the brain.

 

[Stumpy420]

Dogs are smart, they know if it will help them they will take it. If I don't give our yorkie leaves she pisses in my bathroom, like, "That's what you get for not seeing me needing these leaves!" She doesn't like the smoke, but she likes smoking. I think it's just the natural instinct to run from smoke. But the leaves help, just the fan leaves. They don't even have to be covered in trichomes.

 

[Herb Forester]

theres a method called tacking where your rub the oil on the gums allowing the cannabis properties a more direct route to the receptors in the brain.

That should be good for acute onset, just don't get bit! A lot easier than "here buddy hold this under your tongue". I've seen vapor bags placed briefly around the dogs nose and mouth, but they didn't like it very much at first, until a minute or two afterward when the meds start kicking in and relaxing the siezure activity. The effect from inhaling during the seizure was helpful but no where near as effective as daily tincture for preventative.

The lighter focal seizure activity is a good warning sign for an extra as-needed dose (snapping jaws, biting at the air, eyes rolling to one side, light shaking, stumbling around confused, but still conscious/aware). Be on the alert during weather changes too, especially barometric pressure swings.

 

[thunderfudge]

That's a bummer sea,maybe look into juicing fresh leaves.

 

[motz]

It's been a while since I've started a thread of my own, and now I come to this great community with some questions, seeking answers.

My old dog began having grand mal seizures this last weekend, four in two days, very bad, leaving her dazed and confused for hours. Turns out she's a walker when it happens, just jumps up and starts walking, damn near impossible to stop.

We took her to the vet first thing Monday morning and the diagnosis isn't pretty--he feels as my gut told me, it's a brain tumor. He prescribed some prednisone with a very strong admonition that it is toxic to the dog and she'll experience other problems as soon as we put her on it, even though he's put her on the lowest possible dosing schedule for her size (she's just over 85lbs, which has been a trick getting her back up to that point). He said we should wait for another seizure or two before starting her on it due to its toxicity.

I asked him what he knew, if anything, about using cannabis and/or CBD oil for dogs with seizures. He was open to the idea, but felt that there was nothing to it, but go ahead if we felt it might be helpful. So I went ahead and started her on the very last of the elixir I had for my husband when we got home, instead of waiting for another seizure because of how they seem to affect her. My problem? I was scraping the bottom of the bowl so to speak.

So last night I went ahead and cooked down another batch from a jar of buds I've had soaking in grain alcohol for at least two months, probably more like 6-8 months. Cooked down just fine, but when I went to incorporate the coconut oil it never did incorporate. I now have a pot full of liquid coconut oil that won't set at room temperature, with a bottom sludge of oil/concentrate.

What should I do? I can't get it emulsified at all, the sludge just won't loosen up. I was considering adding honey but it's going to take a HUGE amount, and I'm not so sure there's added benefit here. I was also considering pouring off as much of the coconut oil as I can and then reheating the concentrated oil sludge with more coconut oil, but again, I'm just not sure what might happen.

Suggestions?

By the by, the dog hasn't had a single grand mal seizure since putting her on the oil, but she has clusters of petit mal seizures. She seems to know when they're coming because she jumps up and comes over to me, and usually within 5-10mins she's having a hard twitch. Then, after having one or a few, it's over and she's back to being Old Hazel. I've been logging everything but I can't really well log doses because I have absolutely no idea how much of any given cannabinoid is in my concoction. I will be relaying this information to the vet, because I feel it's good for him to know that you can safely give cannabis to dogs for seizures without the side effects of a medication like prednisone.

Thanks community!

@Seamaiden I feel for you Sea.
My Boykin Spaniel companion Amos, had to be put down after darn near 14 years. He had 2 really bad seizures that I know of in a month. You don't know what goes on at night.

My son was going thru a divorce and I told her (my wife) not to but enter Andy a English Springer that I am very glad that came into my life.
Andy has epilepsy has had ever since he stepped into my house.
The bandaid for epilepsy is either sodium bromide or a barbiturate that both kill the liver.
I ended up switching dogfood which helped immensely but the real kicker is I started flipping him the end of a banana.
Low potassium will act like vertigo and high potassium can cause heart attacks.
I really think Andy had low potassium, he still has a few seizures maybe 1 every 3 months or so but greatly reduced from 1 or 2 a week.

It's tough getting on the floor with him but I do it and help him come out of it.

 

[Douglas.C]

So sorry about the dog...

Put the container in the freezer allow the coconut oil to solidify then scrape it out and do whatever you want with it.

The rest of the sluge heat it back up and scrape as much out as you can.. Im sure when it dry's its going to be ROCK Solid.

Heat that sludge back up, add some ethanol to dilute it out, then winterize it. (Lots of posts on winterizing) This will remove the majority of the plant waxes and clorophyll that are making it solid.

A Suggestion for Next time?
Put those same buds in a food-grade bucket, drop in some dry ice chunks and let it sit for 10 minutes.
Shake that puppy up, breaking up the buds and stems.
Let it sit for 10 minutes and repeat.
Keep it up until the buds/stems are mostly powdered.

Now you can do a 30 second ethanol wash and get awesome results, all in one afternoon, no soaking and no need to winterize. :) You'll get the max cbd out of the stems and leaves and buds, along with all the other cannabinoids, in only a 30 second wash. Make sure you wash and squeeze the powdered remains to get everything out.

Another upside is you save significant amounts of ethanol, since your starting material is now a small pile, instead of a large fluffy pile. :)

Dosing
I would look into both leaf and edibles, anything with a low to moderate amount of CBD should be ok, as long as it isn't Kush or Kush related. Not sure if the same is true for dogs, humans with seizures do better without the elevated levels of the terpene Homulene, found in larger quantities in kush and Kush related strains.

You can use resin from a pipe in a pinch, basically decarbed hash oil with ash content. I've used that many times on rescue dogs, to help them calm down. Should work just fine for seizure control as well. (52 dogs rescued and rehomed in 6 years. Sheesh!)

Douglas

 

[1diesel1]

I feel for you, recently lost my 3 year old German Shepard to a blood disease. When we started on all the meds at the beginning he wouldn't eat. So I started to give him RSO oil strait up about the size of a grain of rice. He started to get a appetite after that. It did help.

 

[Seamaiden]

@LittleDabbie -- thanks for that, I'll do exactly that. The oil is very much a sludge, but I'm sure the coconut oil (very deeply colored now) should suffice given how little the dog needs to control the grand mal seizures.

I'm surprised your vet didn't prescribe phenobarbital, it's usually the standard for idiopathic old age seizures in dogs. Long term it is bad for the liver (milk thistle might prevent/delay damage). The steroid route is usually for uncontrollable cases or imaging confirmed tumor/lesion presence.

He feels that it's not warranted in this case, based on how everything's happened his answer was the prednisone. We spent a long time discussing whether or not to go ahead and image her, we're not all that far from UCDavis. Not only can we not afford it, if it shows there *is* a lesion or tumor, treatment options remain the same (again, according to the vet).

As for weed you probably already noticed that canines are much more sensitive to dosage than we are, so micro-titrating slowly to tolerance is important. Tincture should be administered in drops not dropper-fulls, and is an easy way to spike their food with consistency. Main thing to watch for is dangerously slowed breathing (overdose, get to vet for monitoring and IV fluids.) Sleepiness, drooling, ataxia and generally goofy gait will be the first signs of an overly stoned dog, so they'll need some help and a protected area to rest it off. I've seen a few dogs treated effectively with cannabis for seizures, they all did great with daily dosing low enough to mostly avoid the side effects. Often as they age (or if a lesion progresses) the seizure frequency/intensity can increase, requiring re-visiting dosage parameters.

Titrating has been the difficult part, you're 100% correct about that. It's the main reason why I add so much coconut oil, to make titration a bit easier and overdosing the poor dog that much more difficult. So far I've managed to stop all grand mal seizures (I've been keeping extra ice packs in the freezer just in case, because yeah, they get her SO hot!) but I have on two occasions clearly gotten her too high altogether, and my own feelings are that it's not right to do that to an animal who doesn't understand what's happening to them and didn't choose it.

theres a method called tacking where your rub the oil on the gums allowing the cannabis properties a more direct route to the receptors in the brain.

I've never heard of this. It would probably be easier than trying to keep the oil inside a chunk of tuna (she's gotten wise to my other tricks from when she had a bladder infection). I'll try it tonight. Do you think I could put it under her tongue and have the same effectiveness?

The lighter focal seizure activity is a good warning sign for an extra as-needed dose (snapping jaws, biting at the air, eyes rolling to one side, light shaking, stumbling around confused, but still conscious/aware). Be on the alert during weather changes too, especially barometric pressure swings.

Can you explain this a bit more to me? I can feel the weather changes in my sinuses and knees. I notice that when she's had any kind of seizure her pupils are uneven and she seems to be sensitive to both loud and/or sharp noises, as well as visual stimuli, flinches hard and moves her head away. Is there anything I can do to help her with that? I covered her head yesterday but she didn't like it at all.

@Douglas.C -- you just gave me a bunch to chew on, I've never read a single one of our winterizing threads. D'oh!

Either way, I know one thing for certain--the cannabis oil isn't causing the problems the vet told us to watch for if we started her on the prednisone and as long as she doesn't have another grand mal I think we're keeping her quality of life up.

What I don't know for sure is whether or not this will mask me being able to see when the dog's time is really up. This one I'm playing entirely by ear, but so far so good, she's wagging her tail and seems to be happy except when she's going to have a petit mal. Fortunately those are very, very brief.

I'll get my sludge separated from the coconut oil this morning, thanks again!!

 

[smokedareefer]

Sea,
fyi
https://m.facebook.com/cannab.oil.pet/

 

[LittleDabbie]

@Seamaiden Pre cooked bacon I've had to employ that trick with my dog who refuses to swallow pills, NEVER seen my dog refuse a pill wrapped in bacon tho ;) and that shits greasy so it stays pressed together kinda well.

 

[1diesel1]

@Seamaiden Pre cooked bacon I've had to employ that trick with my dog who refuses to swallow pills, NEVER seen my dog refuse a pill wrapped in bacon tho ;) and that shits greasy so it stays pressed together kinda well.

Peanut butter yum yum.

 

[LittleDabbie]

Peanut butter yum yum.

That could be good but if they lick away the peanut butter and a pill is left there gonna shake there head till that pill comes flyin outta they mouth :P

 

[1diesel1]

I always open mouth then apply it under the snout. They go crazy licking. Fun to watch.

 

[Seamaiden]

She's wise to ALL of it, and get this, she doesn't really like bacon or bacon grease (I know! Right?). I've done bacon, hot dogs, cheese, peanut butter (PB is hilarious) and right now her hands down FAVORITE is tuna on a spoon. Since she's a big girl it's not very hard to just jam a pill down her throat, but she's got an extra special skill because she can hack that fucker up from her chest. Swear to God, when my hand goes almost up to my elbow I'm thinking I've pushed the pill down far enough, wouldn't you?

I started doing the gum rubbing thing suggested by @smokedareefer -- MUCH MUCH easier than trying to get her to swallow a small dollop of the oil. This time I got a drop, let it melt on the spoon, had hubby hold open her mouth and just kinda schmeared it right under her tongue. Switched from dosing first thing in the AM to in the evening before dinner. So far so good. She's goin' on a road trip next week, gonna see her little Bichon Frise buddy Mopsy, we're gonna let them fuck each other up.

Funny thing, she's getting playful again these past few days. It's been many months when she's been playful and not responding to another dog, just feeling her oats.

Thanks for all the help, suggestions and offers to help here and by PM. Everyone. And right now I have to put out yet another shout for brother @Loran -- he's answering my prayers, and I'm not sure he realizes just how much it means to me.