SICK AS A DOG
Assistance dog in training ate weed in park
A 10-week-old assistance dog-in-training became severely ill after consuming marijuana that was discarded in a city park
Unresponsive hind legs, utter lethargy and a foggy, zonked-out look were among the symptoms that caused Gaia’s handlers to fear there was something severely wrong with their 10-week-old assistance dog-in-training last Sunday.
After a little sleuthing, it turned out that Gaia, one of the Pacific Assistance Dogs Society’s latest prospects, had sniffed out and eaten marijuana that had been discarded or left in a Vancouver park. The yellow lab had become the latest entrant into a pack of pot-poisoned dogs that has grown markedly in recent months and whose members are showing more severe symptoms than usual.
Tara Doherty, a spokeswoman for PADS, explained how Sunday’s episode began.
“In this case, the puppy was out with its raiser, and young puppies notoriously put stuff in their mouths. They’re like babies. It’s part of how they explore the world,” Doherty said. “They were out for a walk and being quite diligent about keeping an eye on the puppy, but obviously somewhere along the way the puppy picked something up when they were walking through a local park.”
Back home, Gaia started showing “classic symptoms” of marijuana toxicity, including glazed eyes and a lack of balance. When the handler took her out to urinate, the puppy fell to one side and rolled over, unable to control herself.
Gaia’s recovery was mercifully swift and she rode out the drug in about 24 unpleasant hours. But her poisoning was the eighth among PADS’s 160 dogs in just the past year. That compares to an average of two cases per year the society had seen before the start of 2018.
Rob Koreman, the co-owner and manager of the Animal Emergency Clinic of the Fraser Valley, said his veterinarians handle cases of marijuana toxicity on nearly a daily basis. He said that while there has been a minor bump in overall cases since cannabis had been legalized, severe cases have spiked due to dogs ingesting edibles.
“This is kind of scary,” Koreman said. “Because of the inconsistency in the strength, it’s now becoming really serious. If a dog had gotten into a roach or part of a joint or something like that, it wasn’t really that bad. … (They) might be hospitalized for several hours to overnight, but an almost guaranteed recovery.
“However, with oils and edibles, it’s now getting very serious. Animals potentially staying for multiple days in the hospital with very guarded prognoses for recovery.”
Al Longair, a Duncan-based veterinarian and the president of the B.C. chapter of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, said reactions in dogs to THC can range from mild hyperactivity or agitation to seizures, stupor and coma. The psychoactive cannabinoid is absorbed most rapidly when in a fatty form, and the size of the animal that ingests it makes a big difference on the outcome, he said.
The increasing frequency with which PADS dogs have been poisoned by pot is particularly alarming. While the society’s service dogs and those in training spend far more time outside than the average pooch, they are taught in the first four weeks of training never to eat anything on the ground, Doherty said.
The puppy raiser who was out with Gaia at the time she ingested marijuana “is a highly experienced and longtime volunteer of PADS” who has previously raised nine dogs for the society, Doherty said.
Because of the inconsistency in the strength, it’s now becoming really serious.”
Rob Koreman, vet clinician