Animal hospital seeing uptick in dogs getting into marijuana

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - An animal hospital in Charlottesville says it’s noticing an uptick in dogs getting into their owners’ marijuana stash.

“Ten years ago, I would see one or two dogs a year. Now, I say we probably seen one or two dogs a month,” Dr. Charles Wood with Old Dominion Animal Hospital said. “Anytime you see a dog who especially looks like he’s just waking up from anesthesia, you know, he’s kind of sleepy, kind of groggy, we think, ‘Hmm, I wonder if the dog had something that he got into.’”

Wood says it isn’t something that necessarily surprises him, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.

“Because marijuana is much more available now, and people are much more open about it, a lot of times they don’t realize their pet has gotten into it. And sometimes they come in and they just don’t have any idea that that’s even on the agenda that something might have happened,” Wood said.

He says he has never seen a dog overdose from THC. However, the real problem is how it is consumed: “The problem is that with the marijuana a lot of times as in cookies,” Wood said. “So the dog gets into an oatmeal-raisin cookie that’s full of marijuana. The marijuana is not the issue, sometimes as much as the the raisin is the issue.”

[Editor’s Note: Raisins are toxic and poisonous to dogs.]

Wood also says he has seen cases of pets getting into their owners’ prescription drugs or other medications.

“For instance, you take blood pressure medication and the dog got into blood pressure medication, and all of a sudden, they wiped out his blood pressure. You could kill him,” he said.

Wood’s best advice is to keep it all out of their reach.

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