Hi Tillieplay,
Have they done a CSF tap? Bloodwork and x-rays won't show meningitis. I have a Malamute puppy who is going through the same thing. They did all the blood panels, liver shunt tests (bile acid test), x-rays etc. with everything coming back "normal".
They didn't think ours had meningitis at first as he didn't display the common symptoms such as fever, neck pain etc. In fact, other than the seizures, he was clinically "normal". We went through several vets who all gave us differing answers and opinions as well as advising us to put him down. We finally found one who was willing to help. She did a CSF tap and the results came back with a high number of eosiniphil cells. At first they said it was Neospora and treated him for that. He had another seizure so they did titer testing for Neospora, Crypto and Toxoplasmosis, all negative. Which basically left meningitis. He has since had several other problems which I won't get into here, but he has been on a high dose of prednisone for 2 months and has been seizure free for almost 8 weeks on Monday
Seizures can be caused by alot of things, and in a puppy, it's rarely epilepsy. I hope they figure out what's going on with your 2. Good luck
If it's meningitis, and it's not sterile, it can be passed from one dog to another.
Seizures shouldn't last more than a couple of minutes, but they do. One thing you have to distinguish is the per-ictal phase, the ictal phase and the post-ictal phase. The ictal is the actual seizure where the dog will stiffen up, paddle it's legs etc (with a grand mal). With our baby, the pre-ictal consists of him shaking his head and foaming at the mouth. The ictal is a typical grand mal where he goes completely rigid, paddles his feet, cries, deficates, urinates etc. The post ictal varies and can last any where from a few minutes to a day or more, where the dog is shaky, unbalanced, confused etc. With our baby, the actual ictal phase has lasted as long as 3 and a half minutes. The longer the seizure, the more dangerous it becomes.