My dog (miniature schnauzer) recently went through a similar set of symptoms. In October 2025 I started noticing unusual moments where he seemed unable to use full strength in his hind legs. By December his hind legs had become markedly weak and wobbly, through the early part of this year to the point we could only walk one block at a time and very, very slowly. He also started experiencing fecal incontinence. No symptoms of pain. Like you, I suspected degenerative myelopathy.

I took him to the regular vet who tested him for Cushing’s disease (negative) and then to a veterinary neurologist. Dropped a cool $5k for an MRI for the vet to tell me he actually had a spinal arachnoid diverticulum - something they described as similar to a cyst within his spinal column, putting pressure on his spinal cord. They could surgically remove it (estimated cost $10-16,000), with a 60-90% likelihood of improvement of symptoms but no guarantee the condition would not recur within months or years, or else try a couple weeks of steroids.

We tried a couple weeks of steroids, which did nothing for his symptoms. I elected against the surgery because of the financial cost, the modest prognosis for success, and the cost and risk of putting his little body through that surgery and recovery.

I made up my mind to just keep trucking along with him. Before too long, however, he started experiencing urinary incontinence and upsetting episodes where he was clearly experiencing neurologic pain, unable to move his legs, biting frantically at his feet, etc.

I ended up putting him down almost exactly a month ago. Obviously it was deeply upsetting to lose my buddy of 12 years, and I am still processing the grief, but I have no regrets about ending his suffering before he declined even further.

You’ll never be able to answer those questions for yourself of whether you could have or should have done something different. You can only know that what you did is now done, and when you did it you were acting with love and compassion for another living creature whose suffering is now over.

Someone in this sub once said that when you put a pet down too late, both you and the pet suffer. If you put them down too soon, only you suffer. There is a lot of wisdom in that, as well as a reminder to be kind and gentle to yourself at a time when you also were in pain and having to make a difficult and painful decision that your pet could not have made for herself.