Nicky, Epileptic Border Collie

"Will anyone give me a bid?" - that's how it started. We were at an auction to raise money for crippled children, and a breeder had donated a purebred border collie to be auctioned off. Just as my husband was telling someone on the other side of the room that he had better get back to me before I bought the dog, the auctioneer yelled out "Sold" - to me for $15. This was a Saturday night.

About 2 AM on Monday, Nicky had a grand mal seizure. I had seen quite a few greyhounds with seizure activity at the race track, so knew what to do. He came out of it, and I knew we would go to the vet first thing in the morning. Before 8 AM, he had another grand mal seizure. The vet kept him for the day, started him on medication, and when he called me to tell me he could come home, Nicky had another grand mal seizure, so he stayed over for another day. The consensus was that the breeder had had him on medication and discontinued it for the auction and failed to tell anyone about the epilepsy.

When I picked him up, the vet told me the real danger was that he would injure himself during a seizure and/or because of the high dosage of medicine, he would have liver/kidney damage and his life expectancy would be shortened.

Nicky had progressively more seizures, mostly grand mal, but sometimes there would be a day of a whole string of petite mal seizures. When he was recovering, he would always walk in circles and so for his safety, I would put him on a long leash or tie out while he recovered so that he couldn't bump into things or fall down stairs and injure himself, much less just wander off if nothing was in his way.

The seizures continued to escalate and the medication was adjusted many times, and the vet said he couldn't take a chance on neutering him, so when he was in the yard one day and the neighbor's female cocker spaniel came to visit, Nicky became a father.

One day while I was cleaning house, and he was enjoying being outside, he seized and the tie out broke. He wandered off. In the period of 30 minutes, he literally disappeared. I called all the business owners (we lived in a town of 500 people), the vet clinic, and let the sheriff's office know that if he was found and was slobbering, he wasn't rabid or mean - just the seizures. My biggest fear was that he got into a corn field, and we would not find him, or he would wander in front of a car.

We found him and he had been down by the creek, so we cleaned him up, medicated him, and he played with Jessi, ate a good meal, and had the best evening he had had in a long time. He passed away in his sleep.

My lesson in this - I should have had enough guts and brains to let him go sooner. If I could not make him comfortable, and I could not fix the problem - I should have known better.