Are seizures one of the things that come from both sire and dam or just one side of the pedigree. Just heard of a dog and like to research both side of these pedigree if that is the case. Knowledge is a good thing.

This is what I was taught ... many on this board will disagree - probably because they're in denial.

1. If a dog with epilepsy is bred to a bitch and pups (even 1) have seizures, she CANNOT be clear/normal. She MUST be a carrier.

2. If the epileptic is bred to a normal/clear all the pups WILL be carriers but none will have epilepsy.

The following is a quote from the researchers at U. Missouri

"The researchers have found NO evidence that the mode of inheritance is dominant. They have found patterns that indicate inheritance is either recessive or possibly polygenetic."

I don't know if there is a way to tell. I have a seizing dog. Not very often, not requiring medication, but it happens. In all my digging, never heard anything in the bitch line. Random gossip told me about something in the sire line, but folks that know the sire line have never mentioned anything.

I honestly wonder with the folks that have kennel dogs how many MIGHT have problems they don't know about. If my dog wasn't a house dog and thus making me intimately aware of everything about him, I might not know he has an issue. If I kenneled him in a run at night, I would find poop, pee and vomit and clean it up and never think twice. And by the time I got to him in the morning, he'd be back to normal.

And how many of us have had suspicious "seizures" show up in pet homes who think nothing of bringing in the pest control folks when there is a spider or mouse issue? Is it really an epileptic seizure vs a poison issue, iow? Or how about a movement disorder? I think many vets are eager to label things as "seizures" that really are not. I had a dog once w/ heat stroke that went into a seizure and another that was poisoned so I know better to jump to conclusions.

We are taking care of a 6 yr old labrador I bred who started seizuring when he was around 1 yr old, while owned by his original family. They said he never got into poison, ruled out any environmental causes. We did blood draws on 4 relatives and the seizuring boy sent into Miss University for their research. Followed up on all the other pups from that big litter and so far only the one boy has seizures. The family surrendered him to us over 2 yrs ago at which point I took him to several vets over a period of time, trying to get his meds squared away. My vet thinks that our boy's seizures are not genetic but something that happened when he was in utero, congenital.
I tend to believe him because if his dam were a carrier of true epilepsy, there would be a few more pups in the litter who also seizured. His dam was bred 3 times and not one of her pups seizured except for the boy who was returned to us. He has severe grand mal seizures that is hard to control with meds, no matter the combination. We found the only thing that helps him from going into multiple, back to back seizures is by putting liquid valium up his rectum when he first going into a seizure. He has sustained some brain damage to the point we have to spoon feed him canned food for the past 5 months. Epilipsy disease whether inherited or congenital is not a fun experience for the dog or the human family. I wish more breeders would do follow up emails or phone calls to all the pups they sell to families. I was surprised to find out that a dog I had bred was having seizures for 2 yrs and yet the family kept forgetting to call me. They got busy with life and kept meaning to. I found out all kinds of interesting things about the pups I sold to companion homes that year.

This is for sure seizures so not interested in pet familys and other issues. Only one person has attempted to answer my question about mode of inheritance from both sire and dame ? Quess, its not known. Like that someone talked of the bitch line to not always blame the dog but think this time it is from the dog but wondered bitch line also as far as, remembering the pedigree in research.

There are many type of seizures and the mode of inheritance is not known at this time. It can skip multiple generations and then appear in one dog. Dogs who later in life have seizures have not produced any. Further research is necessary.

Genetic Epilepsy is a recessive, whether it is simple recessive or poly is still being researched. There was a lesson on Epilepsy in my story if you read it and thought about it, learn from it. Epilepsy isn't just a one dimensional disease.