A walk in Mill Valley’s Old Mill Park the other day turned out to be a bad trip for Emily Church and her 3 ½ month-old puppy, Zoe.
“As we were walking home, I could tell that something was wrong,” Church said. “Zoe was dragging her nails on the sidewalk, which was really strange. When we got home, I threw her some toys, but she was wobbling and tilting and unstable. She literally started falling over. I knew there was something dramatically wrong with my dog.”
Church loaded the sick puppy in her car and raced to the VCA Madera Pet Hospital in Corte Madera. When Zoe tested positive for marijuana, Church was stunned.
“My jaw hit the ground,” she said. “I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ I’ve lived in the Bay Area for 15 years, and I’ve always had a dog, but never in my wildest dreams would I have gone to the vet and thought this would be the diagnosis.”
It turns out that dogs suffering from marijuana poisoning is not that uncommon in Marin County, especially at this time of year, when pot is consumed in its various forms around 4/20 events, a homegrown countercultural celebration of cannabis that began at San Rafael High School in 1971 and has since gone national.
Meghan Wilhelm, a veterinarian at VCA Madera Pet Hospital, said dogs are brought in with marijuana intoxication symptoms once or twice a month throughout the year.
“It’s more common than you would think,” she said. “I think it’s because of the rise in marijuana availability among people in the form of edibles that are certainly enticing to dogs. It’s important that people think about that.”
Unlike humans, dogs do not get pleasantly stoned on pot. Because they are smaller than humans, the concentration of psychoactive THC, the substance that gets you high, is toxic to them. Symptoms include loss of balance, listlessness, sensitivity to sound and urinary incontinence.
“It can be very serious,” Wilhelm said. “I always tell people, if your dog has ingested marijuana, the rule of thumb is to take the dog to the vet, the sooner the better. Usually they survive it, but it can be several days of hospitalization before they come out of it.”
With marijuana dispensaries in the state selling a wide variety of pot-laced edibles, from chocolate truffles and brownies to peanut butter bars and watermelon tarts, Church theorizes that Zoe could easily have gobbled up a cannabis treat or a discarded joint that may have fallen on the ground or under a picnic table in Old Mill Park during a 4/20 party of some kind last weekend.
“Puppies eat everything,” she said. “I’m constantly pulling things out of her mouth. She clearly ate something she should not have.”
Zoe, a breed of Hungarian hunting dog called a vizsla, slept it off and has fully recovered, but the scare is still fresh in her owner’s mind.
Church, a Mill Valley marketing executive, talked about it with her sister, who lives in Colorado, where marijuana was legalized on Jan. 1. Since then, according to news reports, veterinarians in the state have seen a dramatic spike in the number of dogs they treat for eating pot laced goodies. They say it’s gone from one or two a month to several cases a week.
Church reported what happened to Zoe to the Marin Humane Society, and would like to see communities do a better job of educating the public about this new threat to the health of their dogs.
“During the holidays, we used to do a safety press release about not letting your pet eat mistletoe or poinsettia because they can be toxic,” said John Reese, the humane society’s chief operating officer. “But this takes it to a whole new level.”
Contact Paul Liberatore via email at liberatore@marinij.com
Canines and cannabis: Pot-laced goodies pose a new threat to Marin's dogs
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