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I can tell you it's horrible. One of my grandma's toy poodles has it she is 5 now, but was diagnosed at 3. It went undiagnosed for a long time because we didn't realize the issue we were having was seizures. The poodle has irregular seizures and just freezes staring blankly at the sky for between 1-5 minutes. They put her on a medication to help control it, but she still has break through seizures. No one knows what causes the epilepsy or the seizures. There are tons of different types of seizures, so we can't say it looks like this or that if they have it. If you suspect it may be a seizure take a video of the episode and get to your vet ASAP. I can answer specific questions if you have them.

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Epilepsy is diagnosed by elimination, in other words, eliminating other possible causes of seizures, not because they actually have some way of diagnosing epilepsy. Seizures can range from very mild to very severe. And dogs can have single seizures with months between them all the way up to cluster seizures, which can be several seizures in a very short period of time, minutes. Seizure can last a few seconds to a few minutes, all of them feel like an eternity to me.

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Broad question there, amigo. ;) There's so much to be said about it. We had an Aussie/BC girl that had epilepsy from about age 4. It started off mild, just random episodes of little trembles and shakes, but over a year or so escalated to full, grand mal seizures that wiped her out for the rest of the day.

Fortunately, hers was manageable with a daily dose of phenobarbital and she lived a healthy, happy life to about 12 years old. But I've also seen it progress to the point where a dog has no quality of life, would have clusters of horrible seizures that made her cry and she would just go all zombie-like and senile for two or three days after. Euthanasia became the only humane option left.

Lots of variances in when it manifests, how it manifests and what treatments may or may not work. Some dogs, like ours, live full lives with medical management. I've also heard of dogs who have had seizures from head injuries or other trauma, but not epilepsy.

~ Gloria

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Gloria this heart breaking video along with my sheltie is why I wanted to learn more. Ladd my sheltie is gone and cant imagine losing Ziggy this way. Maybe a worry wart but this can be a heart breaking devastating disease. Thank you for sharing your comments.

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Also this.The Border collie is one of the breeds that has a particularly high incidence of IE. Suggested incidences of IE in dogs vary from 0.5 to 20% in some severely affected breeds (Podell 1995, Mellersh 2010). From data on estimates of total dog population in the UK and on the percentage of all micro-chip registered dogs that are Border collies (Lucy Asher, 2011, personal communication), we estimate that the UK population size of this breed may be around 400,000.

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^^ This (uncited) information doesn't tell us anything about what the incidence of epilepsy in border collies actually is.

 

Where in that range do they fall?

 

ETA: I'm aware that epilepsy occurs in border collies. But unless you have a reason to suspect it may occur in your dog's line (e.g. you know of related dogs who are epileptic) worrying about her getting it is just going to cause you unnecessary stress and detract from your enjoyment of your dog.

 

If and when it happens you can (and will) deal with it. No sense causing yourself grief over a what if.

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