Dr. Lera Clone explains idiopathic head tremors in bulldogs, a condition that usually appears in younger dogs and typically resolves on its own. Most cases have no identifiable cause, and anti-seizure medications don't clearly help, though bloodwork and imaging can rule out other problems.
Questions this video answers
About 38% (as stated in the video).
By the age of 48 months (88% had first symptoms by then).
English bulldogs and Doberman Pinschers are cited as top breeds; Labradors and Boxers are also mentioned.
Chapters
Foreign. Hey guys, Dr. Lara here today. I'm here with Elvis and Elvis is a three or four year old male neutered English bulldog. And Elvis is coming in today because he was having some headshakes or head tremors. And that is something that is very, very common in the English bulldog breed. There was a study that was done where they said about 38% of English bulldog owners that were surveyed said that their dogs had some sort of head shake or tremor at some point in their life. The cause as of right now, the majority of the time we don't know. We have some different suspicions whether it could potentially be what we call focal seizures. Which just means it's just like instead of having like the full blown grandma seizure where they fall over, stiffen their legs, roll their eyes back and all that kind of stuff, it's just like a little focus just on those muscles right there or that part of the body. The other possibility is that there could be some neurologic stuff that's more complicated just to kind of get into involuntary firing of some different nerves that lead to, to you know, the shaking and that kind of stuff. At the end of the day, the majority of the time what we call idiopathic, which means we don't know the cause. Head tremor syndrome is something that is usually temporary. It's not something that is going to be life threatening and it will usually resolve on its own. A lot of the times, you know, in the past we might have put them maybe on some anti seizure medication to see if that will help since we thought there was a possibility this could be focal seizures. But the neurologists now are, as of right now are saying that they don't think that any, they think that anti seizure medications are not successful and it's hard to gauge whether or not they would actually be successful since head tremors are usually not permanent. They're just temporary. So you don't know if it's being, if it's stopping because of the medication or if it stops just because it was just going to stop anyways. It is important to know there are some other breeds. Doberman Pinschers are another big breed that will have the idiopathic head tremor syndrome. Labradors, boxers or some others. But English bulldogs and Doberman Pinschers are probably the top breeds. He came in today. We did some blood work and some X rays on him. Depending on how far you want to go with a workup you, you may need either some sort of ct, MRI and, or maybe some spinal fluid analysis. Their quality of life is usually not affected. So I would anticipate most people what's going to end up happening is they might maybe do some preliminary labs first, see how the patients do, and then kind of go from there. The other thing that I want to let you know is that this is typically something that is usually seen for the first time in dogs that are younger. So it could be puppies or on average, I think by the age of 48 months, 88% of dogs who had idiopathic head tremor syndrome had their first symptoms. So it's something that, like I said, it's not usually seen a lot in older dogs. If you guys have any questions about this particular topic, please leave it in the comment box. General Questions and if you found this video helpful, please give us a thumbs up and or subscribe. And if you know somebody whose dog is potentially showing some of these symptoms, share the video with them. Maybe it'll help answer some of the questions or maybe just kind of help them to understand it more and relax. Thanks for watching, guys. Take care and be safe. Sam.
