Natural Remedies for Degenerative Myelopathy in Dogs: Mobility & Nerve Support

| Modified on May 08, 2026
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Amino Acid Complex
Posted by Vicki (Oklahoma, US) on 03/16/2015
★★★★★

I have a 6 lb. registered male Chihuahua who is now 17 yrs old. One year ago this month, I came home after 8 hrs. at work & found him horribly distressed, hoarse from yelping, unable to move & splayed out on the floor in the middle of a large puddle of water from the water bowl. He could not stand, at all, or move his legs. I took him immediately to my clinic to find out what had happened & left him overnight for treatment. X-ray showed an old untreated injury that I did not know about & was not informed of when it happened & the vet's diagnosis was a combination of that & DM. He held out no hope, hinted that EU would be kind & recommended treatment with Dexamethasone, but no promises. Since I didn't know what else to do at the time, I acquiesced to the vet's recommendation of the steroid.

It made him HORRIBLY sick & did not help at all. It made him severely nauseous & gave him a bloody diarrhea which gave way to an inability to move his bowels without help & difficulty urinating. This was treated by my vet with antibiotics & anti-nausea meds. I began researching that night & eventually found records of a small study done on DM dogs that showed some success using the amino acid lysine. I had already started giving him acidopholus & I had an old bottle of predigested collegen amino acid complex on hand, so began giving him about a teaspoon twice a day on his food. He was very depressed for a while, but in time cheered up & has done nothing but make very slow steady progress since then. He slowly regained the ability to empty his own bladder & bowels & is now able to briefly get around a little on his own. He's now gone through two 16 oz. bottles & is nearly through a third. I hand made him a tiny quad cart, but he's never been in it. He has been kept on fabric surfaces so that if he made the attempt to stand, he would not lose his footing, & he has taken advantage of that. I've had him since he was 6 yrs. old & had noticed for several months prior to finding him paralyzed that he was starting to walk stilt-step on his front legs. I also noticed for years before that he always crossed his front legs slightly when lying on his stomach. His front legs had gone completely rigid when I came home & found him.

(I have a photo of him when he got back from the vet last year, and a short video I made about a month ago)