calliecritturs
Posted : 9/19/2012 9:06:08 AM
I'm going to play devil's advocate here and suggest something else.
When this occurs, you say it's often at times of high concentration? Does she do it repeatedly or just one time? Can you immediately get her concentration back?
What you are describing almost sounds like "fly catching" which isn't a learned behavior at all but rather a small petit-mal type seizure. How to tell the difference? it's tough to be honest.
Ms. Kee Shu (the little old lady peke we had) did it CONSTANTLY. In fact she had a whole series of little repetitive behaviors that went with it -- but the thing that made it easier to diagnose was the fact that you couldn't get her attention easily to break the chain of them.
Tinkerbell's were much much more difficult to determine. Hers is literally more on par with a facial twitch -- and the thing that ultimately defined it to the vets as petit mal or "pre-seizure" stuff was the timing. Never when she's at rest or relaxed -- always at a time of high concentration or stress. Sometimes in front of a human, sometimes not -- but VERY OFTEN **worse** at a new moon or full moon.
This is honestly NOTHING you want to put her on a big medicine like phenobarb for -- the Chinese herbs often completely obliterate these (which is another indicator they are not behaviors, but rather neural/brain stuff).
The big seizure meds all have fierce side effects and just aren't appropriate for this sort of thing (once begun you can't stop them). It's typically something an allopathic (regular) vet isn't going to prescribe for anyway. It's taken a while to hit on the right combination of herbs for Tink -- anything that was tried HELPED a great deal, but by tweaking it we've pretty well completely obliterated them.
Given that the look is somewhat scarey (at least to this neighbor) it's something you may want to pursue. Talk to you regular vet FIRST. If you can possibly get a video of it do so but write down what was going on at the time and the time of day.
Kee's were easy -- she did ti ALL the time, and it was danged near impossible to get the mind engaged because she virtually lived in a constant near seizure state. But wow -- once we got it under control there was a really NICE little dog under all that weirdness.
Tink's have been more difficult -- pugs are well known for having a ton of seizure type issues and we certainly know she was abysmally badly bred. The herbs she's on aren't the type of thing to depress her or make her at all sleepy. The one that she's on is often used for some of the autism spectrum -- it doesn't 'depress' at all -- just enables her to focus without it triggering the "twitch".
I think what everyone says above is likely germaine -- DEFINITELY treat it as a behavior to start with but I'd encourage you to keep your mind/eyes open to the possibility that it may not be voluntary/learned at all.
I'm not trying to be confusing here -- just offering another thot. When we first began to notice this with think she was almost 3 years old. David was convinced it was learned. I wasn't sure. But as we began to catalogue "when" and particularly the time of the month it was at its most intense? Then he began to change his mind -- and once we started herbs and it helped but changed no other aspects of personality, etc. he, too, became convinced.
She may get SO ramped up seeing this guy -- and even going to the fence could be sufficient stimulus -- that it may trigger the type of concentration that causes this to happen. Trying some counter-conditioning will likely tell you a lot because if it's neural conditioning won't change it, but it may calm her enough to lessen it for sure.