Horse Seizure /Equine Epilepsy/ Neurological Episodes / Fits /Convulsions - Case Study for Awareness

This mare has been seen to have seizures like in this video on and off the past 15 years she is 27 years old now. She is an Irish fraught cross part bred Thoroughbred. She has likely been misdiagnosed in the past as she also has EPSM and it seemed to relate to muscle spasms/trapped nerve type of thing! But we now know it’s equine seizures /epilepsy. It’s tricky to record them as they happen at random times but a brief description: Twitching starts in her face and she turns her neck in, the tremors go through her body, she looses coordination, in the last year she now falls over, then gets up canters in circles or sometimes in straight lines depending on where she is in the field, the twitching stops and she goes back to grazing over a 5/10 minute period. Sharing her symptoms to raise awareness and help other owners reach a diagnosis and treatment plan. Little update since I posted the video: the seizures got more frequent so managed to get a more conclusive diagnosis of epilepsy. She has been on phenobarbitone tablets (Epiphen) for the past 3 months and that has stopped the seizures so far 😀 In response to the nasty comments - I can’t control who is shown the video so I apologies if its popped up in your feed randomly and caused alarm or confusion. However, by sharing the video on various platforms I have been able to reach horse owners all over the world who are going though this to get a diagnosis and treatment. Seizures in horses are very rare so there are little resources, support or success stories out there so we often have to resort to searching for other cases and information online. So I am sharing it to raise awareness as there is very little out there about equine seizures especially in the UK/Europe. Also, sadly there is nothing I could do to help my horse in the moments that this is happening because she cannot control her movement and at over half a tonne it is dangerous and futile to intervene! When she comes out of it I give anti inflammatories and aftercare. I recorded the episode so I could show the evidence to veterinary professionals to aid diagnosis because it’s the only way I could show them what was happening. Thank you for the supportive comments and kind words. Feel free to reach out to me if you are going through something similar with your horse I am happy to talk in more detail about my experience and how I managed my horse with this condition for over 15 years so she could live a happy life (of course do get veterinary advice in the first instance).