Article: Head Tremors in English Bulldogs

[2BullyMama]

My bully Otis is 3.5 years old and just started having head tremors out of nowhere yesterday. I had never heard of this until it happened to him and I am so thankful to have found this and other similar articles online saying it is somewhat common in bulldogs. Otis' symptoms match what is described by others here as far as it just being his head, he remains completely alert and responsive while it is happening and we can usually distract him out of it. I feel pretty confident his are the idiopathic tremors but I will be taking him to the vet for blood work, etc just to be sure. IF his blood work and routine tests come back normal, I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to whether I should pursue it further with a neurologist (I assume my vet will refer me to one). Knowing what I know now that these can be harmless tremors, I am hesitant to spend lots of money on MRIs, etc just to find out that it is harmless and the cause is unknown. I don't mean to sound like an insensitive bully mama but we spent nearly $10K on surgeries for him a year ago (bladder stone removal then a urethrostomy soon after) so I'm just hesitant to automatically throw money at a problem if I don't have to because as you bully parents know, if it's not one thing it will be another :-) If his vet tests show he appears to be healthy, I'm tempted to just let these tremors ride themselves out unless anything changes/worsens. As others describe, they don't seem to bother the dog at all. Does this seem like a fair course of action??

Totally makes sense... as long as you can get the tremor to stop with a treat or a toy and he is responsive. They most likely are the harmless tremor.... take video and post and we can all take a look to confrm for you

 

[minibull]

What type of HW medication? Basically all the flea, tick and HW medication is poison. Some of our babies will vomit, sieze, and suffer with lethargy.

[MENTION=572]Libra926[/MENTION] (or others here), is there another way to prevent heart worm? I know [MENTION=6311]Vikinggirl[/MENTION] has shared her success with geranium oil for flea/tick prevention. Our sweetie had what looked like her first head-tremor-type partial seizure 3 days after she had a severe allergic reaction for unknown reason.

The allergic reaction happened 3 days after her first dose of Nexgard flea/tick preventive and 10 days after rabies & distemper vaccines (we couldn't test titers as her previous owners likely gave only puppy shots). On the day she got the Nexgard her dad noticed she was having more odd staring spells. Now we wonder if those were absence seizures.

I do not think the vaccines or Nexguard directly caused the allergic reaction based on its timing, but it seems plausible that the vaccines may have primed her allergy-prone immune system to react to things that she previously at least tolerated. Not sure where the Nexguard fits in, if at all. We are going to pursue allergy testing once she gets back to normal and are changing her food as it currently seems the most likely source of her ongoing allergic symptoms.

I hope that the seizure is a one-time event precipitated by her allergic reaction, but I guess time will tell. It was of the head-bobbing variety but initially she was only somewhat responsive. I will try to post some video on youtube later.

 

[Libra926]

My bully Otis is 3.5 years old and just started having head tremors out of nowhere yesterday. I had never heard of this until it happened to him and I am so thankful to have found this and other similar articles online saying it is somewhat common in bulldogs. Otis' symptoms match what is described by others here as far as it just being his head, he remains completely alert and responsive while it is happening and we can usually distract him out of it. I feel pretty confident his are the idiopathic tremors but I will be taking him to the vet for blood work, etc just to be sure. IF his blood work and routine tests come back normal, I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to whether I should pursue it further with a neurologist (I assume my vet will refer me to one). Knowing what I know now that these can be harmless tremors, I am hesitant to spend lots of money on MRIs, etc just to find out that it is harmless and the cause is unknown. I don't mean to sound like an insensitive bully mama but we spent nearly $10K on surgeries for him a year ago (bladder stone removal then a urethrostomy soon after) so I'm just hesitant to automatically throw money at a problem if I don't have to because as you bully parents know, if it's not one thing it will be another :-) If his vet tests show he appears to be healthy, I'm tempted to just let these tremors ride themselves out unless anything changes/worsens. As others describe, they don't seem to bother the dog at all. Does this seem like a fair course of action??

I'm right down in Orting. Dr Jerry Demuth is our neurologist in Tacoma. We also use Southhill vet right next to the mall. They are great with the bulldog breed. (Dr Kate and Dr Larsen)

I'm hoping a vet wouldn't suggest an MRI just because. Not only are they expensive...but you have to knock them out to do it. Any great vet that knows about bulldogs would know that these are very common.

 

[Libra926]

[MENTION=572]Libra926[/MENTION] (or others here), is there another way to prevent heart worm? I know [MENTION=6311]Vikinggirl[/MENTION] has shared her success with geranium oil for flea/tick prevention. Our sweetie had what looked like her first head-tremor-type partial seizure 3 days after she had a severe allergic reaction for unknown reason.

The allergic reaction happened 3 days after her first dose of Nexgard flea/tick preventive and 10 days after rabies & distemper vaccines (we couldn't test titers as her previous owners likely gave only puppy shots). On the day she got the Nexgard her dad noticed she was having more odd staring spells. Now we wonder if those were absence seizures.

I do not think the vaccines or Nexguard directly caused the allergic reaction based on its timing, but it seems plausible that the vaccines may have primed her allergy-prone immune system to react to things that she previously at least tolerated. Not sure where the Nexguard fits in, if at all. We are going to pursue allergy testing once she gets back to normal and are changing her food as it currently seems the most likely source of her ongoing allergic symptoms.

I hope that the seizure is a one-time event precipitated by her allergic reaction, but I guess time will tell. It was of the head-bobbing variety but initially she was only somewhat responsive. I will try to post some video on youtube later.

I'm lucky..... the only heartworm cases in Washington have been from animals that have crossed the state lines already infected. So we don't treat for heartworm. In fact...we don't treat against fleas either. I've not seen a flea on any of my dogs in the 14 years I've been in this house.

So...I'm the wrong person to ask. But others will hopefully be able to answer soon.

 

[minibull]

What happens if these occur when someone isn't around to give them a treat?

 

[2BullyMama]

What happens if these occur when someone isn't around to give them a treat?

Sometimes, they just stop. Before we knew what they were, we would comfort Nitschke until it stopped. Then after going to the neurologist who told us what they were and how to redirect him... we did the treat thing. Whne not there, they just run the course, they are not painful at all

 

[minibull]

Thanks, 2BullyMama. I hope this is what Buttercup has. She's not too responsive during the episodes except when I offer a treat. Both episodes have stopped upon eating the treat. But separate from these head bobbing episodes today I also noticed some strange very slow up-down tongue movements that continued for a few seconds after I asked her to stop licking her genitals. They did not strike me as voluntary. I really hope it's just another manifestation of a dyskinesia rather than a focal seizure. Really want our girl to be healthy and happy!

 

[minibull]

I also read in an article that extra calcium and taurine supplementation may help but have not verified this elsewhere. Does anyone have additional information about this? If not, I will share if I learn anything more.

Our new V-dog food reportedly has Taurine .6397% but I'm not sure how that translates into mg. I also did not realize that cooking reduces taurine amount in meat and that B-vitamin deficiency may reduce the ability to use taurine in the body.

 

[2BullyMama]

I also read in an article that extra calcium and taurine supplementation may help but have not verified this elsewhere. Does anyone have additional information about this? If not, I will share if I learn anything more.

Our new V-dog food reportedly has Taurine .6397% but I'm not sure how that translates into mg. I also did not realize that cooking reduces taurine amount in meat and that B-vitamin deficiency may reduce the ability to use taurine in the body.

Definitely share, cause when we went to the neurologist he stated there is no known cause of them and they are harmless so if you get more info it would be great to add to the article

 

[Mark Carry]

Like it!

 

[mabejara]

Thank you all for the great info. I own a French Bulldog that is 11 months old and this morning around 6am he started having head tremors. The episode was really scary and very confusing since he has never done this in the past. We took him to the emergency room immediately and the vet told us that this was likely idiopathic head tremors. We are not sure what caused this but the symptoms he has are very similar to what people have described in this website. He is fully aware and stops the tremors once we call his name. He has had several short episodes of 5 to 15 seconds during a three hour period from 6am to 9am. I gave him a bit of ice cream, yogurt and a small piece of banana and he is currently ok. The episodes happened when he was trying to go to sleep and very relaxed. Thinking about potential triggers and came up with the following:
1. He played with a friend's golden retriever yesterday for a 1 hour period. He was very energetic and probably got himself extremely tired. We did not give him any snacks or additional food to balance all the energy he used during the activity. During playtime he showed a few episodes of stress because the other dog was bigger than him. I think the stress is probably one of the primary causes of the head tremor but at this stage I am speculating.
2. We gave him strawberries we picked from a farm yesterday. We saw pesticide at the farm and and we are wondering whether the strawberries had some pesticide that might be causing a reaction. The vet that saw him this morning said he does not think this is the case.
3. We picked up a box of dog probiotics to help Mochi digest his food better about a month ago and we gave him one of the pills yesterday morning. We have not been giving him the pill consistently but he never had a reaction to probiotics before.

I am going to call his vet on Monday but I doubt I will get an MRI or blood tests at this stage. I called the breeder of my dog and it seems like this is the first time she heard about head tremos on frenchies. Hopefully the issue goes away. For now he is resting and doing ok.

I hope this helps.

 

[yankydoodle]

Our little pup had head tremors. I'm pretty sure it was brought on by allergies. She hasn't had any in quite a while. As a side note, apparently, giving plain greek yoghurt solves the issue. We gave her yoghurt for a while.