That sounds just like our beagle. The vet said the same thing. We just hold her until it is over.

I would find a new vet, there is something wrong.

My daughter's 3 year old dog recently had 2 seizures. The vet said to keep an eye on how frequently they occur. She did not recommend medicating unless they appeared more than once or twice a month.

I had a dog with epileptic seizures which had come from having distemper as a pup. She would have the seizures every 2 or 3 weeks from the time she was a pup until she died at 14 many, many years ago. Again, the vet recommended against medicated unless they occurred more frequently.

First thing would be to get his thyroid checked, even if it has been checked fairly recently.

Although the infrequency of the seizures doesn't sound like my experience with low thyroid, I'd get him checked right now.

Many times vets don't want to test, having been trained that thyroid 'never' happens, but dogs die from undiagnosed hypo-thyroid, just as women used to die back when physicians assumed that "women don't get heart disease" & would test for everything else under the sun & then give the woman tranquilizers & be surprised when 'her heart just gave out'.

I lost a dog when her thyroid hormone went to zero because the vet said her seizures couldn't have been caused by low thyroid.

Goldens are famous for having thyroid problems, but Sunny had been checked 4 months before, & the vet said that she *couldn't* have developed such a dramatic problem within that time.

When Sunny's seizures were almost constant & couldn't be controlled by, you guessed it, tranquilizers, the vet finally drew blood & wasted time sending it to the lab, & of course it was too late.

Although other breeds have hypo-thyroidism, Labs may be more likely, since they have a lot of similarities to Goldens.

I'd certainly get him checked right away.

I wish you the best.

Two in a month is not 'rarely' by a long shot. Most of the time medication is recommended if 1) seizures are more often than every 2 months OR 2) seizures are so severe that the pet had a hard time recovering, OR 3) seizures lasted more than a few minutes. Even under the best of circumstances, in a younger dog like yours, seizures that are 'mild' or infrequent are often not treated because even with treatment, most epileptic dogs (and cats to some degree) continue to have seizures (though far less often.. sometimes never again). Our goal is to keep pets from having seizures less than once every 2 months... so if they are already having them less than that, we hesitate treatment as treatment is NOT benign.

However blood work is ALWAYS recommended (and actually so are radiographs and ultrasounds- looking for an errant tumor that could somehow be involved).

Hypothyroidism can be associated with an increased seizure frequency, but actual death from hypothyroidism is pretty rare (not seen a single case in 28 years as a vet). Hypothyroidism is associated with other illness problems as well (heart disease, joint disease, dermatologic problems, weight problems etc.), so correcting the lack of thyroid hormone is indeed recommended.

If two seizures in a month is still considered 'rare' by your vet, I would agree, seek a second opinion. The longer frequent seizures go untreated, sometimes the harder they are to get control of.