Post seizure fear of areas.

[Richard Gozinja]

Like many others in here my Golden Doodle, a 3 year old male named Butter, suffers with seizures. We are in contact with the vet regularly and at this point, on the advice of the doc, have not begun meds. The vet side is under control and the seizures have not come with a regularity that has the vet worried.

The thing I want to ask about is whether anyone else's Doodle has shown any fear of certain areas of the house following a seizure? What happened is that over the last 6 months Butter has had 4 seizures, the last 2 were in our bedroom. In the first of those he seized and fell off the bed, in the second he appeared to know that a seizure was coming, jumped off the bed and ran outside. My wife got him back in the house and within a minute he started the seizure.

Has anyone else experienced this with their Doodle where the dog shows fear of the room or a certain piece of furniture that he perhaps associates with the seizure? If so was there anything you were able to do to help the dog with the fear?

We spoke to our trainer and she said that she has not heard of anything that can be done to remedy this. He will still jump up on the bed but not in the late afternoon or early evening which is approximately the time of day that the seizures in question occurred.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

This answer is not related to seizures, but to the idea that our smart doodles have memories of negative experiences. Our smaller doodle has always jumped into our SUV with room to spare - no hesitation ever.  Well one time he 'missed' and hit the tailgate.  It took months before he could be coaxed to jump again, and even then would not jump at the same angle.  Now he dithers and prepares for the jump, and sometime still refuses to attempt it.  If something this minor affected my guy, I would think yours might associate his seizure with a room or furniture.  I am sure those with doodles who have seizures will jump in with more personal knowledge.

[Madhura Khedkar]

Agree with what Nancy said. Sometimes, doodles associate negative experiences with people, places or smells and that makes them shy of new things. With Einstein, his seizure sometimes is preceded by an aura where his eyes are dilated and he is genuinely scared of something. We try to remove the negative experience by offering him a very high value treat in that place (vanilla icecream or boiled chicken). That somehow helps dilute the experience for him. Good luck with Butter! (love that name).