It depends on the neurological grade. Dogs with pain only, or mild wobbliness that is stable, often do well with strict rest and medication. Dogs that cannot walk are usually best served by surgery. Dogs that have lost deep pain sensation need emergency surgery, where every hour of delay costs odds.
Plenty of dogs sit between the tidy categories, and the assessments can change within hours. Two rules serve owners well. First, deterioration is a fire alarm: a dog that was wobbly this morning and cannot stand tonight has changed category, and the plan must change with it. Second, recurrence changes the maths: a third painful episode in a year is a different conversation from a first, and surgery starts to look less like an intervention and more like a fix.
Be careful with two extremes online: the fatalism that says a down dachshund should be put to sleep, and the miracle industry that says every dog walks again with the right supplement. Neither survives contact with the actual evidence.
Send the case, hear back from a surgeon with what they can do and what it costs, and only pay if you go ahead.
Send what your vet said and quoted. A veterinary surgeon reads it and comes back to you with what they can do and what it would cost, before you pay anything. A written second opinion is from $250.
Rest is the active ingredient; the medication choice matters less than the confinement. Modern practice leans on anti inflammatories and pain control alongside genuine crate rest. What would be outdated is rest without a written escalation plan.
For dogs on the conservative pathway, physiotherapy and related care can support recovery. For a dog that cannot walk from ongoing cord compression, nothing that does not decompress the cord addresses the problem. Use them alongside the right pathway, not instead of it.