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A year and a half ago, my wife and I adopted a 12 year old miniature American Eskimo, as his prior owner came down with kidney failure, and could no longer take care of him. For the most part, he's been in very good health - he has allergies that tend to flare up in the summer, but our vet has been putting him on Venectyl P, and by fall, his itching stops, and he's weaned off it. However, in the last 3 weeks, he's been randomly having what as best as we can tell, appear to be panic or anxiety attacks. They typically play out the same way - he'll wake up in the middle of the night, and begin heavily panting and pacing back and forth in the room, walking into areas that he normally would not go to. Usually, he never ventures to my side of the bed, or into the ensuite bathroom - during his episodes, he'll wander all over the place, and do some odd behaviour like rummaging through the bathroom garbage can to fish out toilet paper tubes. This will go on for literal hours - we've had nights where we get no sleep as he won't calm down until about 6 or 7 am. He'll also continually want to go outside - he'll pace and repeatedly point at the front door. If taken out for a walk, he'll typically relieve himself, but then will want to continue walking - normally if he needs to go pee/poo at night, he wants to go back in immediately so he can go back to sleep. During these episodes, I'll literally have to pick him up and carry him back inside, as he'll buckle down and refuse to come in. I don't think it's an issue of him having too much energy built up either - we still take him for his walks during the day, and he gets lots of attention and playtime at home during the evening. At first, the vet thought that maybe he was having seizures, and that his panic/confusion was a result of the after effects of the seizures. His blood tests came back clean, so he was put on Keppra. At first, that seemed to fix the problem - but it seems like it was more a result of one of the side effects of Keppra being general sleepiness/dopiness for the first few weeks ; it's hard for him to have a panic attack if he's asleep. As he hit the 2 week mark of being on Keppra, the attacks began happening again. We suspect that due to him getting used to the Keppra, he was no longer as sleepy - thus, things started all over, and back to the vet he went. This time, he's been put on a course of Clomicalm - the vet advised that as with any behavioural drug, it may take several weeks to see results, and hence we shouldn't judge it as a failure if he's still having the attacks early on in the treatment. Once again, being on a new medication made him sleepy for about 4 days - now he's starting to act more like himself. Last night, same problem. Midway through, we slipped him about 3 mg of melatonin, as it sometimes helps him sleep when he's restless - he finally calmed down around 3 hours ago, and went to sleep in the bathroom - which is unusual as well, he usually wants to sleep near us. I've taken the day off work out of sheer exhaustion, and just to monitor him. He's currently happily snoring away on the bed, and back to himself. Given that most likely it does appear to be anxiety or dementia, at this point the only thing I can really see to do is to continue his treatment, and bear the bad nights as they come. Main thing I was wondering is if anyone has any tips for calming a dog down during an attack like this? We've tried holding him, talking softly to him, petting him, feeding him treats...with all of them, he just wants to get away from us so he can continue pacing and fretting. Other times I've read that during a panic attack like that, the dog should be placed in a quiet room alone to pace and calm down - we've tried that too. Problem is, he freaks out if he doesn't have access to roam the condo, so if he's so much as put outside of our room, he'll freak out even more and start pawing and shoving at the door.
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Dec 2, 2014 17:46
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 04:43 |
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