he scruffy little dog that ended up in a shelter in Conroe, Texas in 2015 had seen some very hard times. Starving and covered in wounds from insect bites and an animal attack, he’d lost more fur than what was left on him, indeterminate tufts of white and reddish curls over inflamed skin. He had been living in a drainage ditch near a park, surviving flash floods and storms, the shelter worker said, foraging on dropped food near trash bins and handouts from whatever kindly soul could get close enough to feed him.

This dog had once been loved, they thought, but he’d been on his own a long, long time. And some animal had nearly got him. The crescent of a deep bite on his hip remained.

Would I take him? They asked. Could I do anything for this guy in such bad shape that adopters winced and rushed past the window where they saw him — and even rescues were turning away? There were no guarantees about his health. No guarantees about his temperament. No guarantees about anything. But there was a sweet, exhausted gratitude about him that said he deserved a better chance than they could give him, which was no chance at all.

This was Ace, who took the long ride from Conroe to the DFW area and came home to us, whose story is told in Where the Lost Dogs Go. Every bit as fragile as they had described, Ace was touch and go for the first few weeks we had him, and then he rebounded–and marvelously–becoming an eager and able search dog for missing pets, a job he performed for a handful of years.

But in 2019 or so, I had to pull him from the search field. It was in that year that Ace first began having seizures. Infrequent and mild at first, just a drawn up paw and some trembling, they escalated to incapacity and confusion during a few horrible episodes.

I’ve had a number of rescue dogs with seizures before–usually hospice seniors with brain tumors, but not always–and some we ultimately lost to the strokes that followed. Hoping to forestall that for Ace, who might be as young as six or as old as nine or ten (vets could only guess), I took him for all kinds of bloodwork, imaging, and tests. None of the vets ever saw him in a seizure. The tests found nothing significant, none of the conditions that were the usual suspects for seizures. We ran the tests once, twice, three times.

We were offered phenobarbital for him, with the caveat that we might see some lethargy and behavior change in Ace. I hated the idea of that for this rampant, merry, energetic little dog. The seizures were infrequent enough–maybe 3-4 a year–that I really didn’t want to change the quality and nature of his life if we didn’t have to. Even the vet said it might be like launching a cannonball at a gnat because whatever was going on with Ace resisted diagnosis.

So, I made a promise to Ace that we’d watch him, and if the seizures became more frequent, we’d make that choice. They did not for the longest time, and then earlier this year, he had three across six weeks. The last one was quick and frightening because he went down so fast.

I had noticed that any of our dogs that seized always perked up when they roused on the back side of the event if I gave them a taste of peanut butter or NutriCal, then followed that with a protein. It would soften their remaining stiffness and bring them back into focus. The recovery was quicker. When they lapped the peanut butter, we knew the event was over.

This time though, watching Ace, there was something about the way he looked that reminded me so much of the tiny, hypoglycemic rescue puppies I had seen before that I rubbed first jam, then simple syrup on his gums while he lay trembling, eyes glazed. Note: I didn’t put food in his mouth to eat or swallow. I just rubbed the syrup on his gums.

Ace roused within seconds. Within a minute, he was seeking more. I tried peanut butter on my finger, which he ate, and then, a few minutes later, a dollop of cottage cheese, rice, and diced chicken, which he wolfed right down. Then he shook himself–like Whoa, what was all that?-– flopped down to scratch an ear, and asked to go out.

What if, I wondered, Ace just has some kind of funky blood sugar drop that provokes these seizures? What would happen if we fed him small snacks frequently, like tiny breed puppies, to prevent him from going down?

That’s exactly what we did. In addition to the two meals he has with the rest of the pack, Ace now gets snacks every 3-4 hours. Just small ones, because an overweight dog has other health problems.

Ace is pretty sure this is the best idea ever. He has learned to seek us out and petition for a little meal, prancing his way to the kitchen to watch it being prepared. We keep a rotation of tasty foods in the fridge and vary it so that his palette doesn’t get bored, haha.

Friends, you can see where we are with this.

We now call him Sir Snax-a-Lot.

He hasn’t had a seizure since.

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