Seizure-Prone Dog: The Emergency Kit and Evacuation Plan

If your dog is seizing right now, close this page. Start a timer. Keep your hands away from the mouth. Move breakable things out of the way. Cornell’s Riney Canine Health Center adds one tip most owners never think of: if your dog is near stairs, try to stay below it on the steps, if you can do that safely, to keep it from falling further.

Cornell’s first trigger for getting in the car is time: “If your dog has been seizing for more than five minutes, go to the veterinary clinic immediately.” The ACVIM consensus statement notes that most seizures are brief. Cornell’s epilepsy page adds a second emergency, multiple seizures in a 24-hour period (a cluster), and says to take the dog to the nearest emergency veterinarian immediately in both cases. The AVMA’s first aid guidance gives the same two triggers. For a first seizure that stops on its own, Cornell says to stay calm, stay safe, time the seizure, and schedule a veterinary exam as soon as possible once your dog has recovered.

Everything below assumes it is a calm day and you are getting ready. The kit for a seizure-prone dog is a counted medication buffer stored at room temperature, in its original labeled containers, plus a one-page record a stranger can read and a plan for shelters that expect you to give the dose. This is a logistics page. It gives no doses, no diagnosis and no tapering schedule, and nothing here changes what you give your dog or when. Where your vet’s instructions differ from anything here, follow your vet.

What standard go-bag advice gets wrong for this dog

The generic pet evacuation checklist is built for a healthy animal. The ASPCA’s disaster preparedness guidance and the AVMA’s pets-and-disasters kit both call for a two-week supply of medicine, medical records and ID, and both are right. A dog on antiseizure medication has four failure points a generic list never names:

1. Running out is a clinical event. The published labels and veterinary literature treat interruption as a risk of its own.
2. The storage risk points the other way from insulin. These are room-temperature drugs. The enemy is a hot car, not a dead fridge.
3. A change of food can move a drug level if your dog is on potassium bromide.
4. Shelters assume you are giving the dose, on their clock, and one county publishes a fallback option that explicitly cannot take a dog on seizure medication.

If you only do one thing after reading this, do the paperwork section. It costs nothing, and it changes what an unfamiliar veterinarian can do for your dog in the first minute.

Count doses, not days

Both kit standards land on the same number. The ASPCA lists a two-week supply of medicine in a waterproof container. The AVMA lists a two-week supply of medicine alongside three to seven days of food, and says both have to be rotated so they do not expire in a bag.

Two weeks is the right floor. It also quietly assumes one pill a day. Some antiseizure drugs are given once daily and others several times daily, set by your dog’s individual prescription. So do the multiplication before you trust the bottle. Twice a day for fourteen days is 28 tablets. Three times a day is 42. If the bottle in your go-bag holds 30 and your dog is on a three-times-daily schedule, you are carrying ten days, and you will find that out on day ten somewhere unfamiliar. Count what is physically in the bag today and write the number on the bag.

That is arithmetic on a prescription you already have. It is not a dose change and not a reason to get medication outside your veterinarian’s direction. How large a reserve your vet is willing to write, and whether it can exceed two weeks, belongs in a routine appointment. Our pet medication refill calculator keeps the reorder date from sneaking up on you, and the pet emergency kit rotation checklist covers cycling the buffer. The same multiplication applies to anything the medication is delivered with, such as syringes, pen needles, lancets or test strips. Our medical consumables count for an evacuation does that count.

Why “just skip a day” is the wrong instinct

The FDA prescribing label for levetiracetam tablets says antiepileptic drugs, including levetiracetam, “should be withdrawn gradually to minimize the potential of increased seizure frequency.”

A veterinary study of antiepileptic drug withdrawal in dogs (Gesell, Hoppe, Löscher and Tipold, Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 2015) notes that phenobarbital leads to physical dependence and a risk of withdrawal seizures when treatment ends. It also says the higher-risk window for seizure recurrence appears to be during withdrawal and immediately afterward. Merck’s Veterinary Manual, describing how treatment is adjusted, says previous seizure drugs should not be stopped or have their doses decreased until seizure control is achieved, unless adverse effects or another medical issue require a change.

None of that is a tapering instruction for you to follow. It is why a supply gap belongs on the “call the vet now” list, not the “deal with it Monday” list. If you are short, running low, or lost the bottle mid-evacuation, call your vet or the nearest emergency clinic. Do not decide it in a parking lot.

Emergency refills: what three states publish

Most preparedness content stops at “keep extra medication” and never says what happens when the extra is in a house you cannot get back to. Several states publish emergency-dispensing rules for exactly that, and they are not identical.

State	What the published rule allows	Controlled-substance treatment
Texas	Up to a 30-day supply of a prescription drug without the prescriber’s authorization during a declared disaster, when four conditions are met	Excludes Schedule II only
Florida	Early refills for residents of covered counties under a state of emergency, citing section 465.0275, Florida Statutes; the Board also points to section 252.358 requiring insurers to waive early-refill time restrictions	Board notice describes an exclusion for Schedule II
Washington	Up to 30 days of noncontrolled legend drugs under a governor’s emergency proclamation; the rule’s triggering clause covers care for “persons and animals”	Seven-day supply for Schedule III, IV, and V

Texas’s four conditions, per the Board’s notice: failure to refill might interrupt a therapeutic regimen or create patient suffering; the disaster prevents the pharmacist from contacting the practitioner; the governor has declared a state of disaster under Chapter 418, Government Code; and the board has notified pharmacies that they may dispense up to a 30-day supply. Absent a disaster, the same notice says pharmacists may not dispense more than a 72-hour supply in most cases.

The schedule column matters. Phenobarbital is a Schedule IV drug per its own FDA label, while the levetiracetam and KBroVet labels cited here carry no controlled-substance schedule. Under the Texas rule phenobarbital sits inside the allowance. Under the Washington rule it caps at seven days where a noncontrolled antiseizure drug caps at thirty. The drug your dog takes can change the answer.

Now the limit. Only Washington’s rule addresses animals, and it does so in the clause that triggers the rule: an emergency that prevents continuity of health care for persons and animals because their prescribed medications are no longer available. The subsections that follow set out nothing veterinary-specific. The Texas and Florida notices are written for human patients and do not mention animals or veterinary prescriptions. Many canine antiseizure prescriptions are filled at ordinary human pharmacies, and some come through a veterinary channel, such as KBroVet, an FDA-approved animal drug indicated for the control of seizures associated with idiopathic epilepsy in dogs. How a given state’s emergency-refill rule reaches a prescription written by a veterinarian is not established in the published guidance cited here.

So ask, at a normal visit, in plain words. To your pharmacist: if the governor declares a disaster and I cannot reach my vet, can you refill my dog’s prescription under the emergency rule? To your vet: the same question from their side, plus whether they can put a standing note or a larger written quantity on file. Write both answers in your pet binder. Even a “not sure” is worth far more in February than in a checkout line during an evacuation.

Heat, not cold, is the storage risk

If you have read our insulin cooler guide for a diabetic pet, you have the refrigeration problem in your head: a drug that must stay cold and a fridge that will not. Antiseizure medication is the inverse.

Drug	Published storage statement	Source
Phenobarbital tablets USP	Store at 20° to 25°C (68° to 77°F), controlled room temperature	DailyMed FDA label
KBroVet potassium bromide chewable tablets (dogs)	Store at controlled room temperature 20-25°C (68-77°F)	DailyMed label
Levetiracetam tablets (one film-coated label)	Store at 25°C (77°F); excursions permitted to 15 to 30°C (59 to 86°F)	DailyMed FDA label

Read your own bottle rather than this table. Manufacturers and formulations differ, liquid and compounded preparations can carry different instructions, and your label governs your dog’s medication.

Now put that 68 to 77°F window next to the AVMA’s published parked-car figures: an interior temperature rise of 19°F in ten minutes, 29°F in twenty and 43°F in sixty, and cracking the windows makes no difference. On a 70°F day, a parked car passes the top of that storage window inside the first ten minutes. On a hot day it is not close.

That cuts against a common preparedness habit. Do not stage the medication in the car. A go-bag living permanently in a trunk is fine for leashes, bowls, a crate and a spare towel, and it is the wrong home for tablets with a 77°F ceiling. Stage the medication where you live, in the same place every time, as a named line on your grab list. If the rest of the kit stays in the vehicle, put a bright card in the trunk bag saying the medication is the missing piece and where it lives. Our pet emergency plan builder and the pet emergency binder both give that instruction a permanent home. If medication did spend hours in real heat, do not decide for yourself whether it is still good. Ask your vet or the pharmacy, the same escalation the medication refrigeration guide applies to insulin.

The full parked-car dataset is in pet heat wave and hot car safety. Cornell notes that in a prolonged seizure the core body temperature rises to life-threatening levels, so dog heatstroke response is worth reading alongside this page.

Pack the labeled vial, and fill the organizer at the other end

A seven-day organizer is the normal way to keep a daily prescription straight at home, and if your dog takes several drugs it may be the only thing keeping the schedule honest. Bring it. But the organizer travels with the pharmacy vials, not instead of them, because sending the pills out the door on their own quietly deletes information. FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine puts the rule first in its safe-storage guidance: keep pet medications in their original containers with intact labels, with the directions for use and the pet’s name legible. Its veterinary medication-error page lists the same step among things owners can do at home.

Loose tablets in a compartment cannot be identified by looking at them, and the people who will need to identify them are a shelter intake desk, a boarding facility, or an emergency clinic at 2 a.m. that has never seen your dog. The label says which drug this is, which animal it belongs to, and how it is meant to be given, attached to the pills so it cannot get separated from them.

How thin the margin is, in FDA’s own casework. CVM’s medication-error page describes a dog prescribed hydroxyzine, an antihistamine, that was dispensed hydralazine, a blood-pressure drug. The owner gave it for two days before noticing the drug information sheet said what it was for. The printed drug information sheet that came with the drug caught that error.

Shelters ask for instructions, not just pills. Pinellas County’s basic pet supply list asks for medications for a minimum of two weeks, with instructions. Hillsborough County tells owners to bring detailed care instructions with their pet’s supplies so all information is known even though they will be caring for the pet during designated times. The label is the copy that stays stuck to the bottle when everything else in the bag gets moved.

Where the medication sleeps. FDA’s pet-storage page warns that medication containers that are child safe may not be pet safe, and that pets are known to chew through plastic pill vials, boxes and blister packages. It also warns that what you think is out of reach may not be, naming counters, shelves and other high places. A shelter cot, a friend’s kitchen and a hotel nightstand are rooms you have never pet-proofed, so put the medication somewhere latched and above the dog on the first night.

A waterproof container is not permission to repackage. The ASPCA’s evacuation-pack list calls for a waterproof container with a two-week supply of any medicine your pet requires, which is easy to read as an instruction to decant. Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties ask for two weeks of medication without mentioning a waterproof container. FDA’s disaster guidance for human patients says to place medicine bottles or packages in watertight containers if flooding or other water damage is possible. That bullet is addressed to patients, not pet owners, and applying it to a dog’s vials is our extension. The waterproof box goes around the labeled bottle. The limit: FDA also says drugs that came into contact with floodwater or unsafe water should be discarded, even if they are in their original containers.

This week:

• Pack the original vials for every drug he takes, and if the pharmacy split your buffer across two bottles, pack both.
• Bring the organizer empty and bring the vials, and fill it once you are where you are going.
• Photograph every label, and keep the photos with the one-page medical sheet below.

The food swap that can move a drug level

This applies only if your dog is on potassium bromide, and it is the one drug interaction an evacuation is genuinely likely to cause.

Bromide competes with chloride for reabsorption in the kidney, so the chloride content of the diet influences how much bromide stays in the body. A case report in BMC Veterinary Research (Fantinati, Priymenko and Debreuque, 2021) describes an epileptic dog that developed bromide toxicosis after a diet transition cut dietary chloride by 53%, from 0.86% to 0.42% on a dry matter basis. Serum bromide rose 103% over the previous follow-up. The dog showed severe symmetric four-limb ataxia, lethargy, behavioral changes including aggression, and episodes of hyperactivity. The authors’ conclusion: “Dietary changes should be avoided in dogs treated with potassium bromide to maintain stable serum bromide levels.”

The limits: this is one animal, not a population. The owners changed the diet two months before presentation, and the dog had a one-month history of progressive signs. The eight months in the paper is the gap since the previous check, not time on the food, so the report cannot say how fast bromide rose. The same dog also gained 12 kg over that interval while on concurrent phenobarbital. It does not say a weekend of shelter kibble will poison your dog. It does show that the mechanism is real and that a diet change can move the level.

An evacuation is exactly where unplanned diet changes come from: donated food at a shelter, whatever the one open store still has, a friend’s pantry, a boarding facility’s house brand. So:

• Pack your dog’s own food by name, and match the food buffer to the medication buffer. The AVMA’s kit standard is three to seven days of food and the ASPCA’s is seven to ten, both written for a dog whose diet is a comfort item. On bromide it is not, so pack fourteen days of the exact food, the same window as the medication. No agency publishes a bromide-specific food quantity. The fourteen-day number is our reasoning from the mechanism above.
• Keep the bag or a photo of the label, so a vet or a boarding facility can match it instead of substituting.
• If a food change becomes unavoidable, tell your vet as soon as you can reach them, not after you get home.
• Never adjust the medication to compensate. That is a drug-level decision requiring bloodwork.

Our pet food and water storage guide covers keeping a real reserve of the specific food, and the emergency pet boarding checklist covers handing a facility your food and instructions in a form they will follow.

The one page a strange vet needs in the first minute

Assume the worst realistic case: your dog seizes in an unfamiliar town at 2 a.m., at a clinic that has never seen him, and your phone is at 4%. That veterinarian does not need your dog’s life story. They need one page, on paper, in the same pocket every time.

• Diagnosis as written by your vet, with the date. Cornell describes idiopathic epilepsy as a neurological disorder of recurrent seizures with no identifiable underlying cause, with typical onset between six months and six years and a median of 2.5 years. If your dog’s diagnosis is something else, that distinction matters to whoever is treating him.
• Every current medication, by name and strength, exactly as your label reads, with the schedule.
• The time of the most recent dose. The field people forget, and the one a clinician asks for first.
• Most recent bloodwork and any drug-level result, with dates. Cornell notes that medication therapy requires regular veterinary appointments for blood work. Intervals differ by drug, so follow whatever schedule your vet set. A new vet would rather read your dog’s last numbers than order them from scratch.
• Any rescue medication your vet has prescribed, with your vet’s written instruction for when to use it.
• Your veterinarian’s name, clinic and phone number, plus a backup clinic.
• Known triggers and post-seizure behavior for this dog, including whether he has ever been disoriented or reactive afterward.
• A signed veterinary medical treatment authorization. The AVMA suggests including one so your veterinarian can provide care if your pet must be treated during your absence.
• Microchip number and proof of ownership, which the AVMA lists in the same kit.

Print it. Print a second copy for a different bag. Photograph it. Our pet emergency binder walks the whole per-animal build, waterproof pet document kits covers keeping it dry, and paper vs digital pet medical records covers the locked-phone problem that makes paper worth the trouble. The free pet emergency wallet card is the pocket version.

Keep the seizure log in more than one place

Cornell says to time the seizure and keep a log, because timing matters for a life-threatening condition called status epilepticus. It also says to get a video if you can, since your veterinarian must determine whether the event was a seizure and a video can be immensely helpful.

Time the seizure, not the recovery. Merck’s Veterinary Manual notes that owners sometimes mistakenly count the postictal period as part of the seizure. Since the five-minute threshold drives the decision to move, an inflated number is not a harmless error.

Published definitions of a cluster differ, and none is permission to wait. Merck describes seizure clusters as multiple seizures within a 24- to 48-hour period. The 2024 ACVIM consensus statement broadly defines them as more than two self-limiting seizures over 24 hours, and says clusters, especially frequent ones, can pose a risk similar to status epilepticus for seizure-related neuronal damage and complications. Cornell’s epilepsy page calls multiple seizures in a 24-hour period a medical emergency, says some clusters are life-threatening, and says to take the dog to the nearest emergency veterinarian immediately. The AVMA’s first aid guidance lists two or more seizures in a 24-hour period, a seizure lasting longer than 5 minutes, and seizure activity that does not stop as reasons to take a pet to a veterinarian immediately. Cornell’s Managing Seizures page separately lists cluster seizures (one or more seizures in a 24-hour period) among the situations where a vet may start antiepileptic drug therapy after a first seizure, so its wording is not uniform. The safe reading for an owner: a seizure past five minutes, or more than one seizure in 24 hours, is an emergency-vet trip, not a wait-and-see. For a single short seizure in a dog with a diagnosis, follow your vet’s written instructions and tell your vet.

On tooling, the Royal Veterinary College publishes a free RVC Pet Epilepsy Tracker app for iPhone, iPad and Android. Its App Store listing describes a seizure log, a medication log, medication reminders with separate alarms per drug, a pet-details section, and an export function that packages the seizure diary, medication diary and medical history and emails them to your vet. The listing carries the RVC’s own caveats that the information is intended primarily for a UK audience and is not a substitute for advice from your own vets.

Do not make it your only copy. A single digital record with nothing on paper behind it is the failure mode a preparedness page should care about. Log wherever you will actually log, then export or copy it onto the printed page above on a schedule. A dated notebook page works.

Shelters are built around you giving the dose, on their clock

The PETS Act requires, per the AVMA’s FAQ, that state and local emergency preparedness operational plans address the needs of individuals with household pets and service animals following a major disaster or emergency, and it authorizes FEMA to provide rescue, care, shelter and essential needs for them. That is a planning mandate at the government level, not a promise that a specific shelter will manage your dog’s medication.

Hillsborough County, Florida tells owners that a carrier or crate the pet can stand up and turn around in is a must, that vaccination records come with the pet, that the pet will be placed in a designated area and kept in the carrier or crate during its stay, and that the owner will be “feeding, walking, and giving medication, if needed” during times determined by shelter staff. Then the sentence that matters most for this dog: “the designated times could be spaced out up to six hours apart.”

Take that six-hour figure to your vet with your actual label and ask how your dog’s schedule maps onto access windows that may be six hours apart. It is a clinical question with a real answer, and a much better question in April than in a shelter line.

Pinellas County says you must bring your own appropriately sized crate or carrier, that pets are not allowed to stay with owners at a shelter and will be housed in a separate area in crates or carriers, and that pet owners must be at the shelter with their pet to care for its needs, including feeding, walking and administering medications. Advance registration is not required for its pet-friendly shelters.

Then the line that belongs on this page specifically. Under a heading for special-needs residents with pets, Pinellas County says pets “with chronic medical conditions or that require specialty medical care, including insulin-dependent, seizure medicine or special pet foods, cannot be cared for at the animal shelter.” That applies to the county animal-shelter option available to registered special-needs residents, not to the general pet-friendly shelters, and the distinction matters. It is still a published statement that a seizure dog falls outside what one county’s fallback animal-sheltering option can absorb.

Before hurricane season, not during it:

• Read your own county’s pet shelter page and note whether pets are housed separately, whether you must remain on site, and who administers medication. Assume it is you.
• Ask whether the designated care times can accommodate your dog’s dosing schedule. Hillsborough publishes six hours as a possible gap. Your county may publish nothing, which is itself an answer worth having early.
• Do not make the county animal shelter your Plan A if your dog takes seizure medication. Line up a pet-friendly hotel, an out-of-area friend or a boarding facility. See pet-friendly hotel evacuation and the emergency pet boarding checklist.
• Pre-arrange the destination now. The AVMA says to locate and pre-arrange an evacuation site outside the impacted area.

Our full breakdown of pet sheltering is in do pet-friendly disaster shelters exist.

Stress, sleep loss and weather are documented triggers

This one comes with its caveat first, because the finding is easy to overstate.

A study of seizure-precipitating factors in dogs with idiopathic epilepsy (Forsgård et al., Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine, 2019) interviewed owners of 50 dogs with a predefined questionnaire in a retrospective cross-sectional design. It found that seizure-precipitating factors were reported for 74% (37/50) of the dogs, most often stress-related situations, sleep deprivation, weather and hormonal factors. The authors concluded such factors are common in dogs with idiopathic epilepsy, and that their nature is consistent with those in human patients.

Fifty owner-interviewed dogs is a small retrospective sample, and owner recall is not a controlled measurement. This does not mean an evacuation will cause your dog to seize. It means the categories owners reported most often, stress, disrupted sleep and weather, describe an evacuation almost exactly. Reasonable planning treats the odds of needing your emergency plan as somewhat higher than on a normal night.

The practical version is to cut novelty wherever you can afford to, because familiarity is the one variable a go-bag can carry. Same crate, same bedding, same bowls. Same food, which per the bromide section may be a drug-safety issue and not only a comfort one. Same dosing times, adjusted for time zones only if your vet tells you to. Protect sleep where you can, with a crate cover, a corner away from the door and a spot out of the main traffic path. The AVMA says to practice evacuating with all pets and their supplies, so the crate ride is not new on the worst night of the year.

Calming gear for pets in disasters covers the equipment, and calming a panicking dog on an evacuation car ride covers the drive. Ask your vet before adding any calming supplement or medication to a dog already on antiseizure drugs. Interactions are a clinical question, and this page does not answer it.

Transport, restraint and the muzzle question

Most of what applies here applies to any dog: a secured crate, ventilation, and a driver who is not also managing the animal. Two things differ.

Post-seizure behavior is not the dog you know. Cornell says that in the minutes to hours after a seizure (the postictal phase) your dog may remain disoriented or confused, which can sometimes be expressed as aggressive behavior. Its during-the-event guidance is to avoid your dog’s mouth so you do not get bitten, and it warns that the urge to comfort a dog by hugging or stroking its head runs into the fact that the dog is not aware of its surroundings during a seizure. Plan transport so you are never required to carry a disoriented dog in your arms: a crate you can carry, a second person or a sling. Evacuation sled and sling options for a large or injured dog covers the lifting problem.

On the muzzle, the answer turns on which muzzle. The AVMA’s disaster kit list includes a muzzle among travel supplies, and Cornell’s postictal warning gives an obvious reason someone might reach for one. Cornell’s basket muzzle guidance says a properly fitted muzzle allows your dog to pant, drink water and accept treats, and that nylon muzzles that constrict the mouth are not appropriate for most situations. The AKC says soft muzzles prevent panting, which it calls the only way a dog has of dispersing heat, and says never to use one in hot weather. That matters here because Cornell notes dogs only have sweat glands on their paws, so panting is their primary method of cooling, and separately that a prolonged seizure is dangerous partly because the core body temperature rises to life-threatening levels.

So a correctly fitted basket muzzle preserves the cooling mechanism, and a soft occlusion muzzle is the wrong tool for a hot, stressed dog in an evacuation. Our muzzle vs carrier guide has the fit rule, the training walkthrough, and the reason a muzzle never substitutes for a carrier.

None of the sources cited here gives guidance on muzzling a postictal dog specifically. Take it to your own vet at a normal appointment: if my dog is disoriented and reactive after a seizure and I have to move him, how do you want me to handle him? Write the answer down and put it on the one-page sheet. Whatever it is, never put a muzzle on a dog who is actively seizing, panting hard or overheated, and never leave a muzzled dog unattended.

If your vet has prescribed a rescue medication

Some dogs go home with an at-home rescue medication. The 2024 ACVIM consensus statement on status epilepticus and cluster seizures in dogs and cats reviews out-of-hospital options and frames the five-minute mark as when treatment should begin, with the stated aim of minimizing systemic and brain complications. Drugs and routes vary, and which one your dog has is your veterinarian’s call, made for your dog.

This page does not say when to use one, how much, or by which route, and it does not rank the options. If your vet prescribed a particular rescue medication, use that one as instructed. A comparison on a consumer page has no business making you hesitate over what is in your hand during the minutes it exists for.

What preparedness legitimately adds is logistics:

• Know exactly where it is, stored with the rest of the medication.
• Know its expiration date and put it on the same rotation as the rest of the kit.
• Confirm its storage requirement with your vet or pharmacist, since a rescue formulation may not share the room-temperature profile of the daily tablets.
• Get the trigger written down by your vet, in their words, on the one-page sheet. “Use if X” is a sentence your vet writes, not one you infer.
• Note whether it is a controlled substance, because that interacts with the state refill limits above and changes how you transport and store it.
• If you do not have one, do not improvise. Human medication, leftover prescriptions from another animal and supplements are not substitutes. Call the vet.

Poison control, because a first seizure is sometimes a toxin

The AVMA lists seizures and/or staggering as one of 13 animal emergencies requiring immediate veterinary consultation or care, and separately lists suspected ingestion of something poisonous. Those overlap more often than people expect, particularly for a dog with no seizure history that has just had a first event, and during a disaster when a garage floods, antifreeze spills or a dog gets into unfamiliar surroundings.

If you suspect a toxin, the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center is reachable at (888) 426-4435, described by the ASPCA as available “24/7, 365 days a year,” with the note that “a consultation fee may apply.” That is a poison-specific line, not a general seizure hotline. For the seizure itself, the destination is your veterinarian or the nearest emergency animal hospital. Check the number on the ASPCA’s own page before you rely on it.

The AVMA’s default is the right one: any concern about your pet’s health warrants, at minimum, a call to your veterinarian.

Build it this week: the seizure-dog add-on checklist

Everything below sits on top of a normal go-bag, not instead of it. Start with our pet evacuation kits hub or the pet emergency kit builder, then add:

• Medication buffer, counted: ____ doses/day x 14 days = ____ tablets. Actually in the bag today: ____
• Medication stored indoors, not in the vehicle, with a named line on your grab list
• Original labeled containers, not a weekly organizer, because FDA asks that the directions for use and your pet’s name stay legible on the bottle
• A photo of every medication label, filed with the one-page sheet
• Fourteen days of your dog’s exact food by brand and formula if he is on potassium bromide (our reasoning, matched to the medication buffer, not an agency number)
• The one-page medical sheet, printed twice and photographed
• Signed veterinary medical treatment authorization (AVMA suggests it; ask your vet to sign one)
• Most recent bloodwork and drug-level results, with dates
• Seizure log, exported or copied to paper on a schedule
• Rescue medication if prescribed, with your vet’s written trigger and its expiration date logged
• Your vet’s number and a backup emergency clinic, written down, not only stored in a phone
• A crate the dog can stand and turn around in, Hillsborough County’s stated requirement (Pinellas asks for an appropriately sized crate or carrier)
• Vaccination records, which Hillsborough County tells owners to bring with the pet
• Microchip number and proof of ownership, per the AVMA kit
• Answers from your pharmacist and vet about emergency refills in your state
• Your county’s pet shelter page read, with the medication-timing question asked
• A pre-arranged destination outside the impacted area, per the AVMA
• A practice run, because the AVMA says to practice evacuating with all pets and their supplies

If someone else may have to do this without you, the pet sitter emergency instructions generator and the holiday sitter pet emergency plan cover handing over a medication schedule in a form a non-owner can follow. The crate and kennel emergency ID card puts the essentials on the crate itself, where a shelter worker will see them.

Where to go next

If your dog is also older, on multiple prescriptions or has mobility limits, senior dog emergency kit covers managing several drugs at once during an evacuation. If a different hazard is what you are planning for, pet emergency playbooks sorts response by disaster type, and hurricane pet preparedness covers the scenario where the refill and shelter sections above matter most.

Your vet wins, every time

Preparation has a hard ceiling. It can get a counted buffer into a bag, keep tablets out of a hot trunk, hand a stranger a page that says what your dog takes, and stop you from discovering your county’s shelter rules on the night you need them. It cannot tell you whether a specific seizure is an emergency, whether a dose can be adjusted, or what your dog needs clinically.

Cornell’s two emergency triggers are the ones to memorize: a seizure lasting more than five minutes, or multiple seizures in 24 hours, means the nearest emergency veterinarian now. The ASPCA’s instruction about the bigger evacuation question is equally blunt: do not leave your pets behind. Bring the dog, bring the medication, bring the page, and call your veterinarian for every decision this page deliberately refuses to make.