Giant Dogs With Epilepsy

You may have been told to bring your dog into the vet as soon as they had their first seizure and they ran a standard blood panel on your dog. Most of the time I have people tell me the results came back completely normal. This was true in both cases for my dogs Henry and Howie. 

There are two blood tests that I want to mention that I did not know about at the time for either Henry or Howie that I want to bring up because it is unlikely the vet will. 

Complete Thyroid Panel

When I say this I do not mean just having the vet run a T4 blood test. You specifically need to ask the vet for a complete thyroid panel. It can only be sent to a couple of labs in the United States, Michigan State University being one of them. As soon as your dog starts having either one seizure or a cluster of seizures I would recommend you have this test done. Even if your dog has had seizures for a while and has never had this test done I would still recommend you ask your vet to test for this. There is a book called “The Canine Thyroid Epidemic” that is worth a read if your dog has any thyroid issues. If a dog has hypothyroidism and is left untreated even if the dog is taking prescription seizure medication it is unlikely your dog will ever have the seizures under control.  

I know some people will say my dog is on Phenobarbital and has never had blood work done for their thyroid won’t this give a false positive and show the dog has hypothyroidism? No, it will not. Henry was on Phenobarbital after the very first incident of seizures because he has never had only one seizure. He has always had clusters and when I took him to the emergency vet he was put on Phenobarbital that same day. I did not have Henry’s thyroid tested until 2 years later. His thyroid panel came back completely normal. 

Mineral Panel for Zinc Level 

This can be quite a controversial topic for vets and is a test you might have to argue with them about. Zinc deficiency is common in Huskies but is not very well known in other breeds of dogs. Again there are only a few labs in the country this test can be sent to Michigan State University being one of them. If a dog is deficient in zinc seizures are a common symptom. Most dogs are fed dry dog food. The problem with this is kibble is cooked at extremely high temperatures by this point almost all the mineral nutrients have been destroyed. If they add in nutrients later they are artificial and not a form that is easily absorbed by dogs. 

I decided to have Henry’s zinc level tested because he was showing many of the symptoms of zinc deficiency. Plus he is a Saint Bernard and it is thought that giant breed dogs typically need more zinc than smaller dogs. I decided while I was at it and I just wanted to compare for data purposes to have Howie’s zinc level tested as well even though he had none of the other symptoms of zinc deficiency except for seizures. After having the blood work done they both were found to be deficient in zinc. Howie was actually more deficient than Henry which I was quite surprised about. Howie and Henry now both get zinc supplements daily. I use the human brands Now and Solaray. 

If your dog has seizures and you believe they may be deficient in zinc I would not recommend that you just start giving them zinc supplements. You need to have the blood work done to confirm. If you give too much zinc it can disrupt the values of other minerals in the body.

I want to give credit to the woman that runs the Facebook page “The Divine Dog Project” that has been talking about zinc deficiency causing seizures for years. She is where I first learned about this issue. 

https://www.facebook.com/thedivinedogproject

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