Dogs and cannabis edibles: readers weigh in

When I wrote about dogs getting stoned on cannabis edibles last week, I had no idea this was a thing.

From Bill Nesheim (my sort of son-in-law):

This has been a fairly big problem for hikers in New Hampshire.   I’ve seen a number of situations where dogs needed to be rescued from the mountains due to eating edibles dropped on the trail.  Here’s an example:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/hikenh4k/posts/10162254129628724/.

He then sent me another example (you can’t make this stuff up): Owner warns hikers after dogs sickened on trail: Dogs test positive for THC after eating human feces.  And yet another that cost an $800 veterinary bill.

From Michael Jacobson (founder, CSPI, now director of the National Food Museum):

I can relate.  Guests left an unzipped backpack in our basement. Shortly after they arrived, Oliver was moaning, unable to walk. We thought he had a stroke, but when we rushed him to the vet their verdict was that he was stoned. Turned out that our dear guests had two THC-chocolate bars in their backpack, which Oliver decided to eat. Twenty-four hours and two thousand dollars later, Oliver was back to normal.

From Tamar Haspel (science writer, Washington Post)

I saw your piece today — maybe worth mentioning that, if your dog eats weed brownies, it’s often the chocolate, not the weed, that poses the threat.

And how do I know this? Because Kevin and I visited friends in NY, and we had a bag of weed brownies in our luggage. Their beloved King Charles Cavalier spaniel excavated our bag to find them, and ate the whole thing. We came home from the theater that night and he was being really weird, so we figured it out and took him to the emergency vet, who assured us that the weed wasn’t going to be a problem – he’d just be stoned for a while – but they kept him for 2 days because of chocolate toxicity.

We were SO worried that we killed our friends’ dog! But he was fine.

Comment

Tamar is right about chocolate, especially dark chocolate.  It is not recommended for dogs; they don’t metabolize theobromine or caffeine well.  Dark chocolate can have a 3% fatality rate.

Dogs will eat anything!

The bottom line for pets: keep them away from owners’ and friends’ cannabis edibles.

The bottom line for kids: keep them away from all cannabis edibles, whether intended for humans or pets.