 Barked: Mon Oct 15, '12 5:41pm PST |
 | |  | | Multiple grand-mal seizures on a daily basis can absolutely cause brain damage. The only way to tell for sure would be to do an MRI, which really isn't necessary unless you're still seeing seizure activity.
Does he still have seizures on occasion? Extra anxiety and clinginess in dogs who are actively having seizures is common as well. The seizures don't hurt, but they are strange and make you feel funny, sometimes for quite a while before and afterward. Dogs can't understand what a seizure is and that we're medicating and managing it, so they just get scared.
That said, Huskies and Labs are both highly active breeds who don't really "retire." I know of sled dogs well into their teens. My arthritic Vance was running low-level agility up until he died at 10.5 yrs of a massive abdominal tumor. The only times he was low-key were when he was achey.
Not jumping and settling down in new or exiciting situations is also one of the most difficult things to teach. Many dogs grasp the basic concepts, but we the humans don't stick to the training consistantly or manage situations successfully enough for them to truly succeed. So it's tough to use that as a gauge for "the training doesn't stick."
The mentally ill or brain-damaged dogs I have worked with literally make almost no progress whatsoever and forget everything almost immediately after it's taught. There are dogs I have started at name recognition and worked up to recall and sit every single session for months - often feeling like I'm only rewarding coincidental actions - and they truly can not retain any of it. And these dogs are very, very rare. |  |  | |  |
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