Best Commercial Dry Complete Food for Epileptic Lhassa

Choo Choo our 10 month old lhassa has just started having fits, we live in France and our vet is currently running tests to see if it is epilepsy (or rather excluding everything else). He had 3 fits in one day and has been put on crisax until the tests come back but in the meantime I want to change his food (currently Ultima Mini Junior) for a better dry food.

What would others owners recommend (we can get most things from the Uk by post).

Choo Choo is our first dog and we are of course worried especially as he is so young. He weighs about 9kg but isn't fat.

Crikey, 9kg sounds quite heavy? a quick google would have us believe that an average male lhasa = 6/7kg so your chap being 2kh above average at 10months seems a bit much

the food you are currently feeding is relatively high in both protein and fat and the protein source isnt that great but its not the worst thing you could feed. (ie its not packed with chemicals and colourings)

Malka will be able to answer epilepsy questions from experience (she feeds raw)

Hi Dobermonkey - I know, he is heavy (I have to carry him up and down a flight of stairs that is more like a ladder but I checked with the vet and they said he wasn't overweight.

Raw isn't going to be possible but I have looked at James Wellbeloved Adult Lamb and Rice Kibble, Taste of the Wild & Fish4Dogs but I just don't know what would be best.

I would go for Taste of the Wild as it is about the best of the commercial foods and as far as I can remember isn't grain based either

Hi Karen - I will not make any comments/suggestions about your boy's diet at the moment, but I will query why on earth your vet put him on Crisax after just three seizures?

Crisax:

A 250 mg tablet contains:

Substance (s) active (s):

Phenobarbital .......................................... 17 mg
Potassium bromide .................................. 100 mg
Bromocamphor ........................................ 40 mg

The norm is to wait at least a month following the first seizure to see if it/they were a one-off or a recurring thing which could be epilepsy.

If it is then why put him on a mixture of AEDs? [Anti-Epileptic Drugs]. The usual thing is to start with just one, usually Phenobarbitol [Pb] and only add Potassium Bromide [Kbr] if the seizures cannot be controlled by Pb alone.

Which tests has your vet carried out, and did he just prescribe Crisax before getting any results?

The problem with a multi AED like Crisax is that if he is epileptic and the seizures stop, you will have no way of knowing whether it was the Pb or Kbr that helped. And once you have put your pup on AEDs and if he is epileptic, then he will have to be on them for life, so even if he has no more seizures you cannot just stop giving them.

First of all - what tests is your vet running. Secondly, had anything changed in your environment before your pup had the seizures - change in circumstances, the yard being sprayed, even different bug spray or air-freshener? Did he had any recent trauma before the seizures started?

Do you know if there is epilepsy in any of his background lines? Sire, dam, grand-sire, grand-dam etc? With a pure-bred dog it should be possible to find out although far too many breeders will hide it, and if it is genetic it can appear generations later.

Your vet is correct though in that it is more a case of excluding everything else rather than trying to confirm epilepsy.

I hope for the sake of both your pup and you that he is not epileptic, but if he is I would suggest finding a vet who is more knowledgeable about canine epilepsy, as it really does not sound right for a vet to put a pup on what is basically a cocktail of AEDs after just one episode of three seizures.

Hi Tawneywolf - Thank you very much for your recommendation.

Hi Malka - Thank you very much for all of the information - I put my question in the Diet/Nutrition section, this is why I didn't give the full details of ChooChoos fits. All of them have been grand mal type, he had 2 the first day, 3 the next (one of these was in front of the vet) and then another the next day in the morning that's when the crisax was given. He's had no fits since then. The vet is working through a number of tests and when the last one come back next week we'll hopefully know more. Nothing has changed as far as we can see. Thanks again and any food recommendations would be great.

Whoa! Five grand mal seizures in two days. You must either be very freaked out or have nerves of steel. Great that he seems to be responding to the meds. Good luck on the tests: I hope they find something that's treatable. I'm sure you've been told by now, epilepsy is not the end of the road and it often responds well to medication.

From the veterinary advice I've had about epilepsy, diet is not important.

Karen, as Dobermonkey said, I feed raw so cannot really recommend any dry food for your pup, but I know that quite a few people on the Epi List feed TOTW. Just make sure that whatever food you use does not have rosemary in it, as it can be a trigger for some epis.

What I will suggest, and I hope your vet has also said this, is to keep a diary of everything that has happened every day - not just on days that he has a seizure. Everything, including the weather, what times he has eaten and any treats he might have had - anything and everything. Whether you had taken him on a walk to a different place - if you have had visitors - as I say, anything and everything. That way you might be able to find a trigger, should he have further seizures. It might seem a lot to do but it gets automatic.

If he does have another seizure, note down the time it starts, what was happening beforehand, how long it lasts and exactly what happens when he is down, how long it takes him to be "with it" again, and how long, if any, the post-ictal period lasts - and how he is during that post-ictal period.

I have clocks just about everywhere in my bungalow so I can note the exact time of Pereg's seizures - and then time them. And I keep two online diaries - one being a duplicate of the other in case one of the sites go down, so each time I take Pereg to the vet I have a record of everything that has happened.

But - all epis are different so there is no "one thing fits all" [with apologies for the pun]. If, indeed, your pup does have epilepsy, the one thing to remember is that you have to live with it and not for it.

One other thing - as your pup is on Pb which is processed through the liver, give him Milk Thistle and SAMe to help protect his liver. I also give Taurine which helps the central nervous system.

If you have any other questions that I can possibly answer, please ask and I will do my best to help you.

Thanks so much for all the information Malka, I'm keeping a diary but hadn't thought about the weather and a couple of the other things. We're very lucky in that our vet speaks English which is a real help when dealing with something like this. I can get the milk thistle and SAMe online.

Thanks again
Karen

Reading an old post from on here grains (gluten) was to be avoided. (Scroll down page and see 'similar threads' section