Narcoleptic Golden Doodle’s Excitement Over Bacon Puts Him Right to Sleep
If there's one thing that most dogs get excited about, it's getting treats. Toast is a Golden Doodle who happens to have narcolepsy. His 'sleeping' episodes can be triggered by big feelings, like excitement. His humans shared a video of him visiting his brother at work at the beginning of May, and a strip of bacon caused him to have a shutdown.
Dad took Toast to see his brother who was works at the Trail's Edge Brewery in Frankfort, Illinois. Toast has a lot of friends there who enjoy spoiling him when he visits. This time, a friend gave him a piece of bacon and he got so excited he went right to sleep!
It wasn't the bacon's fault; I get excited about bacon, too! I love how he woke back up, took another bite, and was back out again. As his dad says at the end of the video, waking up to bacon is never a bad thing!
People left more than 2 thousand comments about Toast's video, and some of them were really funny. @Dislocated Artistry got almost 85 thousand likes when they pointed out, "Omg. You’re a service human!!!" I'm with @jeff61550 who said, "I don't have narcolepsy, but I do love naps and bacon." @Coto pointed out, "Being overstimulated by bacon is the cutest thing!" @ShonaJagusch had my favorite comment, "He gets a chance to wake up and have his best day like 300 times a day!" and Toast's dad replied, "Yes! This comment here! It’s more true for Toast than you know!"
Narcolepsy in Dogs
I know someone who has narcolepsy, and the first couple of times you witness it, it can be scary. I had no idea though that dogs could have it too! While it may seem like a scary thing, it's actually not life-threatening. While medications and lifestyle changes can lessen the severity of the disease, unfortunately narcolepsy is not curable.
Many people think of narcolepsy as a sleep disorder, it's actually a nervous system disorder. It affects the nervous system and all it controls. Symptoms include loss of voluntary muscle movement, fainting, and rapid eye movement during activity or excitement. Normally, narcoleptic episodes will only last a few seconds to a few minutes, and that seems to be the case with Toast as well.
The easiest form of treatment is prevention, according to Pet MD, "The most important part of treatment is learning to recognize patterns that lead to episodes. Many narcoleptic pets have these events most often when they are excited or during high-exertion activities. If these situations can be identified and avoided, that may reduce how often there are episodes."
While exercise is important to a healthy lifestyle for your pooch, Pet MD advises that you have to pick and choose the safest forms of exercise for a dog with narcolepsy, "...care must be taken in choosing locations so that your dog is unlikely to injure themselves if they have a narcoleptic event. Swimming, running, and hiking steep mountains are riskier activities for narcoleptic dogs."
I think it's wonderful that Toast's family shares these videos to help educate others about the disease. It shows that their Golden Doodle may have special needs that present extra challenges throughout the day but that it doesn't stop him from enjoying life; he is clearly happy and living a healthy life. He also makes so many people smile as he shares his sleepy adventures with us!
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