The dogs
We have three dachshunds. Freyja is our smallest — quiet, watchful, observing everything from a safe distance. Winny runs the household with the confidence of a dog twice her size. And Koe is sixteen pounds of pure personality, completely certain he's the center of the universe. They're not pets in the background of our lives. They're participants in it.
The first seizure
Sarah was traveling when it happened. Koe started acting strangely — walking around in a way I can only describe as lost. Confused. Present, but not quite there. I watched for a moment, thinking he might be playing some odd game.
Then I recognized it. The same absent, disoriented movement I'd seen in a different room, with a different family member. I started to cry — not just for Koe, but because it was happening again.
That first seizure was a grand mal, and it was long. When it was finally over he was exhausted, disoriented, and he came to find me.
He knew it was coming
That part — coming to find me — became a pattern. Before his seizures, Koe would seek me out specifically. He wanted to be picked up and held. He knew something was coming and he wanted his person.
That told me something important. This wasn't random electrical chaos. This was a buildup he could feel — a pressure approaching a threshold. The same kind of warning Sarah had with her jumping hands, in a different language.
Monthly. Predictable. Scheduled.
Over the following months the pattern became clear. Koe's seizures came roughly every thirty days. Not randomly — on a schedule. His brain was filling to a threshold and releasing on a biological clock.
That predictability was, paradoxically, the most hopeful thing about his situation. A scheduled pattern pointed toward a metabolic process rather than a structural one — and metabolic problems respond to addressing the limiting factors. I knew exactly what I was looking at, because I'd seen it before.
What changed
I didn't copy Sarah's plan onto a dog. I researched the canine equivalents — doses scaled by weight, ingredients confirmed safe for dogs, forms suited to canine physiology. But the core idea was the same one that had worked for my daughter.
The results, in Koe's own seizure journal:
| Before the protocol | After the protocol | |
|---|---|---|
| Duration | Up to two hours | About five minutes |
| Severity | Full grand mal, unconscious | Mild, fully conscious throughout |
| Recovery | Exhausted for hours | Normal within minutes |
| Pattern | Roughly monthly | Interval holding or extending |
Is he cured? I'm careful with that word, and careful about causation — two milder seizures can't prove the protocol was responsible. But the neurological picture has changed dramatically. The same brain that was seizing for two hours is now having events that are categorically different. The journal continues. The protocol continues. The numbers tell the truth.