Dizzy after a gallop

Jenko109

Jenko109

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So today my lurcher came along to the horse field.

She milled around for five minutes and then decided she fancied a gallop and had a brief 10 second zoomies.

She then stopped, went dizzy and fell over. Tried to stand and fell back down.

I held her quiet for 30 seconds or so and then encouraged her to stand back up and she was absolutely fine again.

So we went to the vet and had a full blood panel done this evening which has all come back completely normal. Her heart sounds fine.

They have said to monitor to see if she has a further episode, in which case she will need to be referred to a specialist to be fitted with a blood pressure monitor or something.

Has anyone else had this happen to their dog and have any insight to add?

She is 10 this year.
 
This happened to a dog that came for daycare during COVID (owner was a GP). A lurcher too. He completely collapsed. We rushed him to the vets where he was put on a drip and made a thankfully full recovery. It never happened again with us over the six months that we had him.

In his case it was hyperglycaemia.

Did they test your dogs glucose levels?
 
Unsure about glucose. Will ask them. Is that checked in bloods as I did get the more expensive, comprehensive panel done.

She does have a dash of collie, however this was just a ten second sprint so dont think EIC would be the culprit.
 
Jenko109 said:
Unsure about glucose. Will ask them. Is that checked in bloods as I did get the more expensive, comprehensive panel done.

She does have a dash of collie, however this was just a ten second sprint so dont think EIC would be the culprit.
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I’m not sure if it’s routinely checked sorry.
 
Jenko109 said:
So today my lurcher came along to the horse field.

She milled around for five minutes and then decided she fancied a gallop and had a brief 10 second zoomies.

She then stopped, went dizzy and fell over. Tried to stand and fell back down.

I held her quiet for 30 seconds or so and then encouraged her to stand back up and she was absolutely fine again.

So we went to the vet and had a full blood panel done this evening which has all come back completely normal. Her heart sounds fine.

They have said to monitor to see if she has a further episode, in which case she will need to be referred to a specialist to be fitted with a blood pressure monitor or something.

Has anyone else had this happen to their dog and have any insight to add?

She is 10 this year.
Click to expand...
I've not read all the replies but yes i did have a similar thing with an old dog some years ago.
He used to come running with me. Came most days so he was pretty fit and able to do it. One day i just realised he wasn't along side and he'd keeled over a little way back (like seconds). Went to the vets and all was fine.
It happened again, and again when we got to the vets all was good.
It then started happening more often, he'd always recover quickly but this time the vets diagnosed a heart defect. I can't really think what it was called-someone here will know, its very common.
Anyhow he had medication and did stop running, was fine still doing normal dog walks, off lead still able to run round a bit but not "forced a few miles"
He did really well and lived years longer.
 
CorvusCorax said:
Was it warm? Heat exhaustion? Anything she could have run into? Vestibular?
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Not particularly warm and we had only been there five minutes for which she had barely broken out of a walk for the majority of that time, so definitely not heat exhaustion.

Was out in the open field and I watched her do her sprint so didnt run into anything.

Will look into vestibular.

Thank you
 
CorvusCorax said:
Was it warm? Heat exhaustion? Anything she could have run into? Vestibular?
Click to expand...
This possibly my friend had similar happen to her dog yesterday because the temperature suddenly went up and the dog ran around too much then he just totally exhausted himself, he even tried to put himself in the bath I think he just over heated.

They too there's to the vet because he just wasn't right and they gave a steroid jab and within 20 minutes he was fine.
 
So we had a second episode, some nine months or so later.

Exactly the same, did a short gallop, not a warm day, pulled up, went wobbly and hit the deck. Lasted maybe 30 seconds to a minute.

Then completely fine like nothing ever happened.

Had a heart scan done. She has a more pronounced heart murmur but they were happy with her heart in general and said she did not require any medication at this time.

So discussed the option of just regular heart scanning, perhaps every six months to see how things progress.

The other option is a referral to a cardiologist, which I'm umming and ahhing about. They said they would fit her with a 24 hour ECG, which is all well and good, but I won't be able to replicate the conditions that these very, very seldom episodes happen in. She just isn't much of a galloper. She lopes around and has a jolly time, but it's rare she will hit top gear. Plus even if I can gee her up enough to sprint, she has had plenty of episode free sprints which have been uneventful over these months.
 
My dog did this but it was quite sudden in that she'd never done it before, then every time she exerted herself she passed out for a moment. When she did it at the vets they could see that her heart rate was dropping dramatically each time. She was 17 with pancreatitis too so it wasn't fair to prolong things. If it had just have been her heart they could have tried medication.
 
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