On Tuesday afternoon I was working at my desk with both dogs lying behind me when I heard a loud commotion. I thought they were play-fighting, but when I looked back I realized that Sam was having a seizure.

He was on his side with his rear legs drawn up, he was shivering, and his upper body was swaying from side to side. His eyes were so dilated that his pale blue irises were just a thin rim about the black of his pupils.

Sam had a seizure about a year earlier one night while we were in bed. It looked pretty much the same. This time I immediately took him to the vet. He couldn’t walk, so I had to carry him to the truck. He has always had problems with car sickness, so I wasn’t surprised that he vomited. When I got to the vet’s he jumped out of the truck and was able to walk in. They saw him pretty quickly.

He was a little shaky, but seemed to be over the seizure. The vet looked at her records and saw that he had actually had two previous seizures. The first was in 2018. The second was about a year later. This one was about eight months later. She said it was probably a form of epilepsy, and that we should monitor him, and if the seizures came less than a month apart, she would put him on medication.

And then he had another seizure in the vet’s office.

She gave him a valium, which didn’t really calm him much. So she gave him an injection, which calmed him immediately.

Phenobarbital is the most common treatment for epileptic seizures in dogs. The vet said the hope is that it will keep the seizures to no more than once a month. I hate to think of poor Sam going through a seizure like this that often. It’s a hard thing to watch, knowing that you can’t do anything for him. I assume it’s worse for him to actually go through it.

On Wednesday he seemed completely normal. I took him and Zoe out into the front yard for their regular after-lunch play period. He chased around, rolled on the ground, and chewed on Zoe’s cheeks just as he always has. He seems no worse for the experience.