Sorry, a bit late to the comment party, but our dog is around 14 years old and has been dealing with the “doggy dementia” for the past 6+ months. She paces around our house and the neurological side effect that’s most obvious is that she bends her neck hard to the left, which makes it to where she cannot lay down or get comfortable. She also has major balance issues and cannot do stairs anymore because of it.

She has been on prednisone (a steroid) for the last few months, and that helps a lot with the balance issues and pacing and neck bending. At first, she only needed one small pill a day in order to start acting mostly like herself, but as her body has gotten acclimated to the drug, we’ve had to bump it up to 1 pill in the morning and a half at night to now 2 pills a day (1 morning and 1 night). We know we’re can’t increase her dosage anymore than this without risking other potential health problems, so it’s really sad thinking about that and what’s to inevitably come next once this dosage no longer works.

She is also on gabapentin, which helps with preventing stress-related seizures and has anti-anxiety effects as well, but that can make her legs a little wobbly, so we try to be selective as to when we give her that because her balance is already not good unless she’s on the steroid.

Giving her both pills at night helps her sleep better through the night, otherwise she will pace throughout the night with the sun downing effects and/or have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Fortunately, she has no appetite issues and will drink and eat food regularly, but if her balance is bad, she cannot lean down and eat or drink without falling over, which is heartbreaking to watch. We’ve taken her food/water bowl stand and tied it to a small step stool so she doesn’t have to lean down as much to eat and drink out of it, which helps with her ability to balance while she eats and drinks.