Lesley Marshall

I let my dog die because I trusted the wrong people. I'm writing this so you don't make the same mistake. My dog Rosie was put to sleep fourteen months ago. I held her on the floor of the vet's office while it happened. She was 9 years old. I had spent £3,530 over two years trying to stop her back legs from failing. It wasn't enough. I have a second dog. Bear. He's 5. And right now, his back legs are starting to do the exact same thing Rosie's did. And I'm terrified. I'm not a vet. I'm just a regular person who thought I was doing everything right. And I want to tell you what happened because I see so many of you posting the same exact things I posted two years ago, and it makes me sick to my stomach. If your senior dog is slipping on the floor — or their back legs are getting weaker every month — and you're still on the same prescriptions and supplements that stopped working, please, PLEASE read this whole thing. I know it's long. I know you're busy. But two years ago I would have given anything for someone to tell me what I'm about to tell you. Here's what happened. Two years before Rosie was put to sleep, she started slipping on the kitchen floor. Just occasionally at first. She'd plant her back legs wrong after lying down and scramble to get up. I'd watch her front legs do all the work while her back end dragged behind. I bought non-slip socks. Then toe grips. Then yoga mats and carpet runners laid across every room. At first I thought it was just the tiles. Lots of dogs slip on tiles. I actually posted in my Facebook group: "Rosie keeps slipping on the kitchen floor — has anyone dealt with this? Is it just the surface?" Everyone said yes. "Get yoga mats." "Try toe grips." "Some dogs just have trouble with hard floors." So I didn't think anything of it. But then it got worse with Rosie. By month 3, the slipping was every day. And the muscle loss was visible. Her haunches that used to be strong and round were sunken. Her back legs were losing mass. She started kicking one leg out sideways just to stay upright — like a kickstand. Bear was starting to slow down too, but not as bad. Maybe just age, I told myself. I posted about it again. "Rosie's back legs are getting weaker every month, we've tried the yoga mats and nothing's helping. Anyone dealt with this?" Someone said it was probably just arthritis. "Try a joint supplement — glucosamine chews — give it time." Someone else said fish oil helped their dog. Another person said to get a ramp for the sofa. My vet confirmed it at her checkup. "Arthritis. Very common at her age. Let's start her on a joint supplement and see how she goes." So I kept following the advice. The glucosamine helped for about six weeks. Then it stopped. Not all at once. Slowly. Like someone turning a dial down one notch at a time. A little more splaying after walks. Some hesitation before getting up. Then the sound of her claws scraping the tiles at night. Faintly at first. Then every morning. I went back to the vet. "Let's add Galliprant. It's an anti-inflammatory — should help with the pain and stiffness." £80 a month. But it helped. For a few months she moved more easily. Got up quicker. Seemed less stiff. I thought we were on top of it. Then it started coming back. I told my vet the Galliprant was fading. "Let's add Adequan injections. They help lubricate the joint and slow cartilage breakdown." We added them. Helped for maybe six weeks. Then the weakness crept back. "Let's consider Librela." £110 every four weeks. On top of the Galliprant. On top of the Adequan. Monthly spend: over £200. And I found out later that long-term Galliprant and Librela carry real risks to the liver and kidneys. I even saw a comment in a Facebook group: "My dog was walking until the vet gave him this injection and hasn't walked since without a sling." I was paying £200 a month to potentially damage her while she kept declining. I drove home from the vet one afternoon and sat in the car in the driveway and didn't go inside for ten minutes. And I couldn't stop thinking: I tried everything. I TRIED EVERYTHING. For two years I watched her get weaker every month. I gave her every supplement. I filled every prescription. I posted about it. I asked people. And everyone told me to try the next thing. But here's what made everything worse. One morning Rosie couldn't get up off the floor at all. I had to deadlift her back end just to get her outside. At 2 AM. At 4 AM. Every night. She stopped coming to greet me at the door. Stopped following me room to room. She'd just lie on the cool tiles and wait for me to come to her. Her eyes looked different. Tired. Like she'd accepted that this was her life now. That look is what broke me. I sat on the floor next to her one night and held her while she lay there unable to get up. And I thought: I am watching my dog disappear. Slowly. Week by week. And I can't stop it. I started Googling "quality of life assessment for dogs." I read through the criteria. Mobility. Hygiene. Happiness. Pain. I scored her honestly. I closed the laptop and sobbed on the kitchen floor. Rosie dragged herself over to where I was sitting and put her head in my lap. She couldn't stand up to reach me. But she still came. My dog was comforting me. While her back legs were failing underneath her. I couldn't sleep that night. I couldn't sleep for weeks. Two weeks later, I made the decision. I held her on the floor of the vet's office and I told her she was a good girl. The vet said she wasn't in pain anymore. I drove home alone. I kept thinking: there has to be something. There has to be SOMETHING that could save Bear. I was not going to let it happen again. So I started researching. And I mean OBSESSIVELY researching. I joined every senior dog Facebook group. I read every Reddit thread about hind leg weakness. I watched videos from veterinary specialists. I read medical journals that I barely understood. And I started seeing a pattern. SO MANY people with the exact same story as mine. "My dog started slipping on the floor around age 7." "Glucosamine helped for a bit then stopped working." "Vet kept adding prescriptions." "Monthly cost got to £200 and she was still getting weaker." "Eventually couldn't get up on her own." "Had to make the decision." Over and over and over. I found a thread on Reddit from two years ago. A woman whose dog went through the exact same spiral. Same timeline. Same prescriptions. Same escalation. Same outcome. Someone in the comments said: "The medications don't fail because vets don't know what they're doing. They fail because they're all aimed at the same thing — the joints. Not the actual cause." That destroyed me. Because I knew something was wrong underneath. I just didn't know what it was. The more I researched, the angrier I got. Because here's what I found out: Hind leg weakness in senior dogs doesn't happen overnight. It happens slowly, over YEARS. The first warning sign starts earlier than most people think. By the time your dog is slipping, a lot of damage has already been done. The first sign is a dog who takes longer to get up — or a dog who hesitates at the bottom of the stairs. When muscle cells start losing their fuel, they weaken. The back legs lose stability first because they carry the most load. The dog starts splaying on tiles. Then scrambling to get up. Then the claws start scraping at night. A dog with healthy muscle cells gets up clean. Plants their paws flat. Moves without hesitation. A dog with failing muscle cells slips, scrambles, and loses mass in their haunches no matter how much you spend on prescriptions. But instead of recognising it as a cellular warning sign, owners buy yoga mats and tell themselves it's just aging. And I kept coming back to the same thought: the joint supplement the vet recommended — it works. Glucosamine genuinely supports cartilage. But if it were the joints, Rosie would have been walking again. The glucosamine was doing its job. But the weakness kept coming back. Because the problem wasn't the cartilage. It was the muscles surrounding the joints. And no joint supplement touches that. I was so angry I wanted to scream. Why didn't my vet tell me this? Why didn't the Facebook groups know this? Why is NOBODY talking about this? I spent hours reading about muscle decline in senior dogs. About what causes it. About whether it can be prevented. And that's when I found something that changed everything. A veterinary research paper about NAD+ depletion in aging dogs. Inside every muscle cell are tiny energy factories — called mitochondria. Those factories run on a fuel called NAD+. When Rosie was young, her NAD+ levels were high. The factories ran at full capacity. That's why young dogs have boundless energy — they recover quickly after exercise, spring up off the floor, muscles strong and responsive. By age 7 or 8, dogs start losing NAD+ faster than their body can replace it. By age 8, they've lost more than 50% of it. In some breeds, it happens even faster. The factories run out of fuel. Muscles stop firing properly. The back legs weaken. The slipping starts. The haunches thin. Here's the part that destroyed me: the body can't just make NAD+ from nothing. It needs a precursor called NMN — that's what the body uses to produce NAD+ naturally. But as dogs age, their ability to produce NMN slows down too. So NAD+ keeps dropping. And no joint supplement, no painkiller, no injection does anything to stop it. And after years of depletion, the muscle cells stop firing properly. That's when the slipping starts. That's when the splaying appears. That's when the kitchen floor starts showing you that your dog's cells are running out of fuel. I couldn't stop crying when I read this. Because Rosie had been on premium joint supplements for two years. Glucosamine chews. £35 a month. "Supports joint and muscle health" right on the label. And the NAD+ inside her muscle cells had been depleting the entire time while I thought I was giving her the best. After reading everything I could find, I made a decision. I was NOT going to let Bear go through what Rosie went through. I immediately went on Amazon and bought an NMN supplement. £35. Good reviews. "Supports cellular energy and muscle health." Started giving it to him every day mixed in his food. I watched the kitchen floor obsessively. Watching every time he walked across it. Checking for slipping. Six weeks went by. And it got WORSE. Bear slipped twice in one morning. Then three times the next day. The back legs were starting to lose their grip exactly the way Rosie's had. I freaked out. I took him to the vet. Described what I was seeing. The vet examined him. "Some early muscle weakness. Normal for his age and size. We can start him on Galliprant if it gets worse." I wanted to scream. "He's on an NMN supplement! If the problem is NAD+ depletion, the supplement should be FIXING IT!" The vet just shrugged. "Sometimes these things happen anyway." I went home and felt completely hopeless. Then I got MAD. I wasn't going to accept this. I wasn't going to watch Bear go through what Rosie went through. Two weeks later, I had to go to the dog rescue centre where I'd adopted Rosie from years ago. They needed me to fill in some paperwork to update their records. I was sitting in the waiting area, and I saw a small brown bottle sitting on the shelf behind the reception desk. A dropper bottle. I didn't recognise it. I pointed to it. "What's that for?" The receptionist smiled. "Oh, we give that to all our senior rescue dogs. It's an NMN supplement. Liquid. Our head vet put all of them on it about a year ago." My heart started racing. "All of them? Even the ones who come in with mobility problems?" "Especially those ones. We had about eight dogs come in last year — all different breeds, all with hind leg weakness. Our head vet said the same thing was happening to all of them at the cellular level. She put them all on this within the first week. Within six weeks, most of them were moving properly again. We haven't taken a dog in with hind leg weakness since that we haven't put straight on it." I could barely breathe. "Can I... can I talk to your head vet? Please?" The receptionist looked at me funny. "She's not here right now, but I can see if—" "Please. It's really important. My dog was just put to sleep because of hind leg weakness and my other dog is starting to show the same signs and I've been giving him an NMN supplement but it's not working and I don't know what to do." Her face changed. "Oh my god. I'm so sorry. Let me call her." Ten minutes later, she came back. "She said she can meet with you tomorrow at 2 PM. Is that okay?" "Yes. Thank you so much." The next day I showed up at the rescue centre at 1:45 PM. The head vet — Dr. Claire Brennan, veterinary rehabilitation specialist — met me in a small office. I told her everything. About Rosie. About two years of prescriptions. About the euthanasia. About Bear starting to slip. About the NMN supplement I'd been giving him that wasn't working. I pulled out my phone and showed her a picture of the Amazon supplement I'd been using. She looked at it and her face changed. "That's a chew. It's not going to work." I blinked. "What?" "NMN in chew or capsule form barely absorbs. Studies show less than 30% reaches the bloodstream. The rest passes through your dog's system without ever reaching the muscle cells. Your dog has been getting maybe a fraction of what the label claims — and none of it was arriving where it needed to go." I felt sick. "But the reviews were good. It said—" "Doesn't matter. Most NMN supplements on the market are worthless. They either don't have enough active compound, or they're in a form that can't survive stomach acid, or the delivery system breaks down before it reaches the cells." "So the supplement I've been giving him for six weeks has been doing NOTHING?" She nodded. "Probably making things worse, actually. Because you thought you were fixing the problem, but the cellular fuel shortage was still progressing." I put my head in my hands. "What do I do? How do I save him?" She pulled the same brown dropper bottle off the shelf behind her. The same one I'd seen at the reception desk. "After testing every NMN supplement on the market, this one — Zoomies NMN — is what's been working for the dogs here. I've recommended it to other owners too, and they've told me their dogs were moving properly again within weeks." "The delivery system is nanoliposomal — a liquid technology that wraps each NMN molecule in a protective shell that survives stomach acid and delivers it directly into the bloodstream. Up to 98% absorption versus less than 30% for chews. But I didn't just trust the label. I sent it to a lab myself to verify. What it says on the bottle is what's in the bottle. No fillers. No degraded compounds. That's why I started using it here." I stared at her. "Why haven't I heard of this? Why isn't this what vets recommend?" She leaned back in her chair. "Because most vets make more money treating hind leg weakness than preventing it. I left my practice because I couldn't do it anymore. Couldn't keep charging people £3,530 over two years for prescriptions that managed the pain signal while the cellular fuel kept depleting underneath — when £28 a month of this does what all of it couldn't. I came here to work with rescues because I can actually do what I love without feeling guilty — making sure these dogs live longer and healthier." I felt like I was going to be sick. "Can I take this? Right now?" She handed me a bottle. "These are free. Try it for a few weeks. If it works, you can order more directly from their website." I thanked her and drove home. Started giving Bear Zoomies NMN that same day. For the first two weeks, nothing changed. Bear was still slipping. Still scrambling on the kitchen floor every morning. I was terrified it wasn't going to work. But then, around day 14, I noticed something. He crossed the kitchen without slipping. Just once. But I saw it. The scramble was slightly less. I told myself not to get my hopes up. But by week 3, the slipping was happening once or twice a day instead of five or six times. And he started following me room to room again. Something he hadn't done in months. Week 4: he was getting up from lying down clean. Paws flat on the floor. No scramble. Week 6: he ran to the door when he heard me come home. Full run. Kitchen tiles. No slip. I took him back to the vet eight weeks later for a mobility assessment. The vet watched him walk across the room. Watched him get up from lying down. Watched him trot back. "His hind leg function has improved significantly. What did you change?" "I switched to a different NMN supplement. A liquid one." She didn't say anything. But I knew. Zoomies NMN was actually WORKING. That was six months ago. Bear just had his latest check last week. No hind leg weakness developing. No splaying. No scraping at night. He's 6 now. Still on one dropper a day. Nothing else. And I think about Rosie every single day. Because if I'd known about NAD+ depletion two years earlier, she'd still be here. I'm writing this because I see so many of you posting the same things I posted. "My dog keeps slipping on the kitchen floor — is it just the tiles?" "We're on Galliprant but her back legs are still getting weaker every month." "My vet said it's just arthritis. She's getting older." Because you're watching your dog lose the use of their back legs in slow motion and you don't even know it. Your kitchen floor is SHOWING you that something is wrong. But everyone is telling you it's normal. It's not normal. Rosie tried to tell me she was dying. For TWO YEARS she tried. She slipped on those tiles every single day. She scraped her claws every night. She gave me every warning she could. And I ignored it because I didn't know what it meant. Don't be me. If your senior dog is slipping more than they used to, something is wrong. If their back legs are losing strength no matter what you spend, the cellular fuel is depleting. Don't wait. Don't ask Facebook groups. Don't trust your vet to catch it. And for the love of god, don't waste your money on chews and capsules that don't work. I wasted six weeks giving Bear garbage while his cells kept losing fuel. Six weeks I'll never get back. Six weeks closer to losing him the way I lost Rosie. If you're in the same situation I was, just try it. That's all I'm asking. I know it costs more than the supplements you've already tried. But with a senior dog, you just can't afford to be cheap like I was. The difference between higher quality ingredients that actually reach the cells and a chew that passes straight through — that could be the difference between getting more good years and having to say goodbye too soon. Try Zoomies NMN. Give it a few weeks. Watch the floor. If it works like it worked for Bear, you'll know. And if it saves your dog, it'll be worth it. Here's where I get Bear's NMN — the only brand that actually worked when the Amazon one failed: tryzoomies.com/products/zoomies-nb-1 I wish someone had told me about this before Rosie died. I'm telling you now. Please don't ignore it. P.S. Dogs hide muscle decline until the NAD+ crash is severe. Slipping on the kitchen floor is the final warning. Don't wait for the quality of life assessment like I did. P.P.S. If your dog is 6 or 7 and just starting to slow down — you are in the best position possible. The NAD+ crash hasn't fully set in yet. Start now. Before the splaying. Before the scraping. Before the first £200 month. Bear is proof. Same household. One got it early. One didn't. The difference is £3,530 and two years of watching her disappear. Don't wait. tryzoomies.com/products/zoomies-nb-1