A woman house-sitting in Edmonton had to rush the homeowner’s dog to an emergency vet after he consumed THC, the compound found in cannabis.
Jessica Serbu noticed the three-year-old golden lab named Puma was behaving oddly an hour and a half after she took him for a walk around the neighbourhood.
“He was flinching if I got too close to him. He was disoriented,” Serbu said.
“He started peeing uncontrollably, and this is very odd behaviour for Puma because he’s a very energetic dog, three-year-old Lab,” Serbu said. “At one point even earlier in the day, he stumbled getting onto the couch, like he missed the couch entirely.”
Serbu knew something was wrong and rushed him to an emergency vet, but it was no small feat to get him there.
“An animal on THC is extremely lethargic. They find it hard to move, so getting a 90-pound Lab into the car was the first major challenge for me,” Serbu said.
“I took him to the emergency vet clinic, and they brought him inside and diagnosed him with THC consumption.”
The vet told Serbu that it can even be fatal for some dogs if they consume THC — similar to the dangers of chocolate for them — and clinics are seeing more and more cases lately.
“The vet said that it was becoming more common since the legalization of marijuana, that people are improperly disposing of their butts or even their edibles,” Serbu said.
“The vet told me that the smell of marijuana is very enticing to dogs.”
The vet who treated Puma told Serbu that THC also takes longer to wear off on dogs. That proved to be the case for Puma.
“Four days after Puma originally consumed whatever he consumed, he was still displaying odd behaviour,” Serbu said.
Puma made a full recovery and is already back to his old self.
But the whole experience is a wake-up call for people to be on the lookout when dog-walking and for THC users to ensure they’re the only ones getting high on their own supply by disposing of products properly.