The case of my dog is worth reporting. At the age of 9 she was in very poor health. We put her through two surgeries to repair a ligament in each back leg, and a third surgery to remove a cancerous lump from her face. Despite the surgeries, she needed arthritis medication. Her front right leg was becoming lame, and on bad days I had to carry her up and down the stairs. Just over a year ago, after her cancer surgery, I put her on the regimen of four special nutrients that I recommend. These are vitamin C, vitamin D, niacin, and thiamine. My dog weighs 60 pounds. I feed her 2000 mg of vitamin C, 800 IU of vitamin D, 125 mg of niacin, and 100 mg of thiamine two or three times per week. For the first few weeks I fed her these doses almost every day.

Besides the vitamins, little else has changed in my dog’s life. She eats the same food, goes on the same number of walks to the same places, gets petted by the same people the same number of times. So it is hard to attribute her amazing recovery to anything but the vitamins. I was amazed when after 6 months on the vitamins she first jumped up again into the back of my car when I took her for walks. She was running around again like when she was a puppy and I was overjoyed. She would return to the car sore and I’d have to help her into the car. Today, she ran around like a puppy on her walk and jumped back into the car after the walk. During the walk, she came tearing down the hillside and then bounded – stretched out end to end – over a large fallen tree. I had forgotten she could ever do such a thing. More than one year after I started treating her with the vitamins, she is still healing. Chronic diseases get worse so slowly they are often confused with the inevitable effects of aging. Apparently they can improve in a similarly slow fashion making it very difficult to connect the cause (vitamin supplements) with the effect (improved health). With people, it will always be something else. It’s the new diet, new trainer, new job, or the new house. It couldn’t still be the vitamins. We correctly associated pills with drugs. Drugs are pills that are designed to work great the first time and then, if anything, work less well as time passes.

I’ve written extensively about vitamin C, vitamin D, niacin, and thiamine. Read more here, here, and here. I consider these to be four special nutrients. I gave them to my dog because I expected them to help. Single cases provide limited evidence. My dog’s case is worth special reporting because the response is so extreme. I gave her the vitamins because the science has proven they would help her. I recommend the vitamins to people because the science has proven they will help. Cases like my dog are special because they demonstrate just how much improvement lucky individuals can experience. If my dog can experience improvement that is reasonably described as resurrection, the average person can have a lot more confidence that the same vitamins will do them enough good to make it worth the effort.

For dogs and cats, the lesson is much more significant. All pets experience health problems as they age, but do not ordinarily have access to the miracles of modern medicince. My dog was very lucky that we could afford the surgeries. Many pets have owners who can’t and simply deteriorate until the suffering gets so bad that putting them to sleep is at least discussed. Unlike surgery and drugs, vitamins are inexpensive and available to every pet owner and vet. Dog and cat owners and vets have much to gain and little to lose by giving the vitamins a try.