What to Do When Your Pet Has a Seizure

Watching a pet have a seizure is one of the most frightening things an owner experiences. The instinct is to intervene physically, and that instinct is almost entirely wrong.

Here's what actually helps.

During the seizure

Do not put your hands near their mouth.

The belief that animals swallow their tongues during seizures is a myth. They don't. What does happen is that owners get badly bitten — a seizing animal has no control over its jaw, and the bite force is considerable. Every year people end up in emergency rooms because of this.

What to do instead:

1. Note the time. Duration is the single most important piece of information. Look at a clock.

2. Move furniture away, rather than moving the animal. Clear a space around them.

3. If they're near stairs or water, gently drag them away by pulling on the skin at the scruff or by sliding a blanket underneath. Otherwise leave them where they are.

4. Dim the lights, turn off the TV, keep it quiet. Sensory input can prolong things.

5. Keep other pets and children away.

6. Don't restrain them. Holding a seizing animal down does nothing helpful and risks injury to both of you.

7. Film it if you can. This sounds callous. It's genuinely one of the most useful things you can do — vets rarely witness the seizure and video massively improves diagnosis, including distinguishing a true seizure from fainting, vestibular disease or other episodes that look similar.

8. Speak calmly. They probably aren't aware, but it helps you.

After the seizure

The post-ictal phase can last minutes to hours. During it, animals may be:

• Disoriented, wandering, bumping into things
• Temporarily blind
• Ravenously hungry or thirsty
• Restless and pacing
• Wobbly and uncoordinated
• Unusually clingy, or unusually withdrawn
• Occasionally aggressive — not deliberately, but through confusion

Keep them somewhere safe and confined. Away from stairs, pools and roads. A quiet room with the lights low.

Let them sleep. Offer water once they're steady enough to drink without choking. Food a little later.

Be careful. A confused post-ictal animal may snap. Approach calmly, don't loom, and keep children away.

When it's an emergency

Go to a vet immediately if:

• A seizure lasts more than five minutes. This is *status epilepticus* and it's a genuine emergency — prolonged seizures cause dangerously high body temperature and brain injury.
• Two or more seizures occur without full recovery in between
• Three or more seizures in 24 hours (cluster seizures)
• It's their first ever seizure
• They are struggling to breathe, or gums are blue
• They don't recover normally within an hour or so
• They're a known diabetic — could be dangerously low blood sugar, which needs immediate treatment
• You suspect poisoning — several toxins cause seizures, and this changes treatment entirely
• There's been a head injury
• They're very young or very old, where underlying causes are more likely to be serious

Otherwise, for a single short seizure in a known epileptic, phone your vet during hours and report it.

What causes seizures

Idiopathic epilepsy. The most common cause in dogs between roughly six months and six years, particularly in certain breeds. "Idiopathic" means no underlying cause is found — the brain is structurally normal. It's managed with medication and many dogs live full lives.

Structural brain disease. Tumours, inflammation, malformation, stroke. More likely in dogs having a first seizure over six years old — which is why a first seizure in an older animal warrants more thorough investigation.

Metabolic causes. Low blood sugar, liver disease (particularly portosystemic shunts in young animals), kidney failure, electrolyte disturbances, low calcium.

Toxins. Several household and garden substances cause seizures — certain rodenticides, some insecticides, snail bait containing metaldehyde, permethrin in cats (from dog flea products — never use dog spot-on treatments on cats), chocolate in large quantities, xylitol, some plants, and illegal drugs.

Infection. Certain infectious diseases affecting the nervous system.

In cats, seizures are less common than in dogs and are more likely to have an identifiable underlying cause, so investigation is generally more thorough.

What your vet needs to know

Write this down after each episode:

• Date and time
• Duration of the seizure itself
• What happened immediately before — asleep, excited, eating, any trigger
• What it looked like — were all four limbs involved, or one side? Paddling, rigidity, chomping? Loss of bladder or bowel control? Were they conscious?
• Duration of the recovery phase
• Anything unusual in the preceding days — new food, new medication, access to anything toxic, a fall
• Video, if you have it

A seizure diary is genuinely important if this becomes ongoing, because treatment decisions depend on frequency and clustering, and human memory of frightening events is unreliable.

The investigation

Expect: a full physical and neurological exam, blood tests including glucose, liver and kidney function and electrolytes, blood pressure, and — depending on age and findings — possibly MRI and cerebrospinal fluid analysis at a referral centre.

For a young dog with normal bloods and a normal neurological exam between episodes, many vets will monitor rather than immediately image.

About medication

Anti-epileptic medication isn't usually started after a single seizure. Common triggers for starting treatment include: more than one seizure a month, cluster seizures, any episode of status epilepticus, or particularly severe post-ictal phases.

Once started, it is not stopped abruptly. Sudden withdrawal can cause severe seizures. Never stop it because things seem better.

Give it at the same times every day. Consistency matters more with these drugs than with most.

Living with it

Most epileptic dogs do well. The goal of treatment is usually reduction in frequency and severity, not necessarily complete elimination.

Practical adaptations:

• Keep a seizure diary, always
• Block access to stairs and pools if seizures are frequent
• Tell anyone who looks after them what to do
• Ask your vet whether you should have emergency rectal or intranasal medication at home for clusters — for some dogs this is transformative and prevents emergency visits
• Avoid known triggers if you identify any

Members log seizure dates, durations and recovery times in the community tracker, which produces the frequency chart that medication decisions actually depend on — and means that when your vet asks "how many in the last three months?", you have a number rather than a guess.