Paroxysmal dyskinesia (in dogs)

Reading: Approach to canine paroxysmal dyskinesias by Posporis, Wyatt & Wessmann (2018), Companion Animal, 23, 276–281.

Our dog, Breezy, has an observational diagnosis of PD. It’s a curious condition where very occasionally her hind legs stop working for a few minutes. And then she’s back to normal as if nothing happened.

The diagnosis was via VetCT, and amazing service from what I can tell, where vets post challenging questions and get quick turn around from a wide variety of experts. Sort of a StackOverflow for vets, perhaps.

The above paper is a great summary of what’s known. A few genes may be implicated and one, PIGN, is something we have a result for and Breezy doesn’t have the risk variants.

What is interesting, our vet pointed out, is that we’re doing behaviour work with the dog for impulse control (and she’s doing very well)—and some of the drugs for PD, if we ever need them, help with these kinds of behaviour issues.