Poor Izzy!

We were having a great weekend!  Delaney was off getting royally spoiled by her grandparents at the farm, and Craig & I were enjoying a long overdue date night.  We had purchased a night's stay at the Lincoln Embassy Suites last February, so we finally decided to use it last night.  We spent the afternoon at the Devaney Center watching our niece Sydney's (aka Syd-fishous) swim meet. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner out at JTK last night (thanks to a sweet Living Social deal!), then we attended an Ugly Sweater Christmas Party at the Ruwes before we settled down for some sleep after midnight. 

We were rudely awakened at 6:15a.m. this morning with a call from the PetsMart Pet Hotel.  We had boarded Izzy there for the night, as it is her favorite place to be boarded if she absolutely has to be.  It was a PetHotel manager telling me that Izzy had just suffered a seizure and that they were rushing her over to the emergency vet.  We were up, packed, and walked out of our suite within 5 minutes.  I got a call from the vet at the e-vet within about 15 minutes states that Izzy was ok and alert, but they recommended some further testing to figure out the cause of the seizure. 

We got down to the e-vet and discussed everything with the vet.  We weighed the options and decided to do some blood work to rule out infections of causes of that nature.  Well, her labs came back relatively normal for being right after a seizure.  They said that they were comfortable letting us take her home and just not leaving her for 24 hours.  Beagles are a breed of dog that is susceptible to epilepsy, and it is common for the first seizures to start at age 3 & up.  Izzy is about 3 1/2, so we are right in that window.   Given the labs came back relatively normal, this could mean we are looking at an epilepsy diagnosis down the road if she suffers from more seizures.  Let's hope that this was just a freak occurrence. 

After we left the e-vet we headed over to PetsMart to pick up Izzy's things and pay our bill.  I asked the girls there for a play by play of what went down.  Apparently Izzy had gotten up and eaten fine this morning.  They were just going for their morning walk/exercise in one of their play rooms.  She was awake and alert, but within 15 seconds of walking into the room it started.  Her head started shaking, and then she fell over and started convulsing.  I'm confident that the two girls working at the time handled her far better than we would have at home.  They said that it lasted about 30-40 seconds and she "came to" relatively quickly afterwards.  They were very concerned about Izzy and told me to expect a call from them to check on her within the next couple days. 

She has been resting since we got home.  She seems pretty normal just tired, which is always the case after we leave her.  She suffers from some serious separation anxiety from Craig.  So, now I have to fret all week because we have to leave her again this coming weekend for our big trip down to Kansas City for the Packers vs. Chiefs game.  I have a spot reserved for her at Wilderness Kennels where she stayed when we went to Okoboji last July.  She got along fine there last summer and the people there are super nice, but now I'm really torn on what we should do.  PetsMart is our favorite, but they are pretty pricey for a longer stay!  Oh, decisions, decisions.  Any volunteers to dog sit?