Not all get them though. Some go through unscathed, while others are not so lucky. Whenever we take a DM dog, we keep fingers and paws crossed that they will be one of those lucky ones, but somewhere in the back of the mind we always expect the worse.
Over the years we have had many of our own and several fosters that have had fits. It is horrible to watch and worse seeing them so confused and lost afterwards, knowing there is little you can do to help apart from give them love, reassurance and time to come through it.
Teija, our first DM was plagued with them from early on and eventually, at just 5yrs old had one so bad that she never recovered, and we lost her. Meanwhile her litter sister had very few and then only in the later years of a long life. Kashi has only had a handful so far in his 10 years with us, but his litter sister suffers badly.
Biscuit, the baby of the gang is now aged two and has just had her first one, but it was not like one we have ever seen before. Usually fits resemble frantic running whilst on their side, incontinence and they are prone to bite their tongue or mouth resulting is a lot of blood, afterwards there is confusion but things settle quickly and once they sleep it off they are back to their form of normal. Biscuit, on the other hand went from sound asleep to shooting up onto her feet and darted out in a blind panic crashing into everything. Afterwards she was so befuddled that she just took herself anyway to hide. She had no notion of who I was and didn't recognise any of the other animals. She did eventually sleep and thankfully after a good 4hrs greeted me with a tail wag and the enthusiasm that was her typical self. We now watch her a little more closely but only time will tell if this is going to be a regular part of our lives with her.
Each dog has their own pattern for the way the course of a fit runs and how they recover afterwards. Unfortunately, you do get very used to ticking off the stage boxes and automatically knowing how long each will last when they have them regularly, which is an invaluable indicator when things are not going in the right direction.
There is no cure. There are medical intervention that can help to keep frequency to a minimum, but the side effects have to be weighed up against quality of life in each case. The ideal solution would be for DM pups never to be born … but this is still an on-going educational quest.