The author and Tanner, ever thankful for their time together.

It was a sight…a haunting experience…and I’ll never forget it.

After a long but good winter Saturday of working and guiding at the game farm, I was kicking back in my fireside recliner, comfortable and semi-conscious in that good-tired kind of way. Tanner, my then six-and-a-half-year-old Lab, my buddy and coworker, was stretched out on the floor at my feet. All was right with my world.

Noticing the yellow dog stir, I watched as he uncharacteristically struggled to his feet. It all happened as if in slow motion. First his hindquarters lost control and his butt thumped the hardwood. Then his neck stretched taught, his nose pointed at the ceiling, his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed onto his side, to begin thrashing wildly in what I recognized as--though I’d never witnessed one before--a full blown, mouth-frothing seizure.

With no clue as to what to do, I fell to his side and actually tried to hold him down, talking to him in a series of random mumblings, all in an effort to calm the guy. But he was literally hearing nothing of it. Mentally, he was outta there. Physically, his muscular body pounded the floor with a fury and strength unimaginable.

Then suddenly, after several agonizingly long minutes, that nasty, mysterious current coursing through the dog’s body shut off as if a switch had been thrown. Tanner’s eyes opened and after he caught his breath, he wobbled to his feet, gave me a “What hit me? What have I done wrong?”look, and began stumbling, as if in a drunken state, around the house.

It was enough to tear my heart out.

For the better part of an hour he resembled anything but himself. It was probably a good three hours before he was back to near normal, though still a bit limpy, no doubt muscle-sore from the exertion of the seizure.

I knew full well what had just happened. But I was near panic-struck, questioning “Why?”My first call was to my dog-training buddy Mike Lambrecht. He didn’t have an answer. But being far more experienced than I, he at least presented some possibilities: low blood sugar, anemia, a bacterial infection, a brain tumor, or even worse (it sounded to me for some strange reason), epilepsy.

Then too, it could have been an injury. Tanner had taken a head-over-heels tumble onto a gravel road out of a pickup moving 30 mph, (due, I’ll admit, to my carelessness), the past October.

Or, I wondered, was it a result of the inoculations he’d gotten only two days earlier, a potent cocktail that included a combo shot for distemper, Parainfluenza, heptospirosis, Adenovirus, and Parvo, along with a Lyme’s shot? (I’ve been particularly suspicious of the shots since; when, one year later, my son took his Lab to the same vet clinic, they wouldn’t administer the full batch of shots at once but spread them out over two visits. Even more curious, the vet stressed my son should be particularly attentive to any reactions, almost as if to say, “We’ve had problems with these inoculations in the past,”without coming right out and actually saying it.)

My second call was to my friend and Tanner’s breeder, Jim Powers. Jim and his wife Judy are longtime field trialers and have experienced several lifetimes-worth of Labs. It’s fair to say they’ve seen it all. “Sounds like you’re going to need to get him on phenobarb [Phenobarbital],”Jim offered in a calm, matter-of-fact way that was at once strangely disappointing, yet reassuring. In retrospect I wish I’d heeded his advice, pursuing this long-established, long-standard course of action, more urgently.