Dogs eating 'pot scraps' leads to concern among owners, expensive vet bills

Apr. 4—On a mild Wednesday night in March, Christina Miller worried Tulip, her year-old terrier, was dying.

The young dog couldn't walk without tipping over, kept bobbing her head up and down and was urinating all over the floor. Usually lovable, the dog was, well, "fairly deranged," Miller recalled.

She rushed to Roadrunner Veterinary Emergency & Specialty Hospital in Algodones — the nearest 24/7 emergency vet to Santa Fe — where a receptionist correctly predicted Tulip's diagnosis as the dog lurched through the door: accidental ingestion of marijuana.

Consuming cannabis is very rarely fatal for pets — Tulip fully recovered — but Miller's experience was not an isolated incident. She said it's happened to her twice now after walking Tulip at Santa Fe's Ragle Park, a popular spot for dog-walkers.

Studies suggest legalization of cannabis and increased accessibility to the drug have coincided with increased reports of marijuana toxicity in pets nationwide.

A 2022 study based on voluntary surveys of 251 veterinarians in the U.S. and Canada found cannabis poisoning cases in pets increased 448% over the prior six years. The Animal Poison Control Center similarly reported a 765% increase in calls about pets eating marijuana from a period in 2018 to 2019.

Megan Pierce, the hospital manager at Roadrunner, estimated owners come in with dogs who have eaten marijuana one or two times a month.

Hunter Kothenbeutel, a vet at Smith Veterinary Hospital in Santa Fe, said he sees dogs who have eaten marijuana "a handful of times a year," and that number could be trending slightly upward.

Kothenbeutel has not seen such a case in a few months — it's less common during the winter, perhaps because fewer people are out and about — but treats marijuana-toxicity in dogs "at least once every couple of weeks" during the summer, he said.

Owners in "a fair number" of those cases reported unknown ingestions, in which dogs began exhibiting symptoms after a walk or visit to the dog park, he added.

Sometimes dogs get into their owner's stash of marijuana, too. People are being more honest about that now the drug is legal in New Mexico. The candor helps veterinarians, Kothenbeutel said, who added the problem usually is easy to diagnose.

"When they're walking in the building, most of us can say, 'OK, yep, that's a THC dog,' because they're very flinchy, they're reactive to everything and they're usually dribbling urine," Pierce said.

"They do look like they're stoned — I don't have a greater way to describe what the dog looks like," said Brent Parker, a vet at the Santa Fe Animal Hospital.

Other telltale signs include clumsiness, lethargy and a slow heart rate.

Dogs have more cannabinoid receptors in their brains, so a small amount of marijuana will affect a dog more dramatically than a human, Pierce said. Sometimes, THC, the primary active compound in marijuana, is mixed with other substances toxic to dogs, Kothenbeutel added.

"Dogs don't enjoy being high, so they're fairly uncomfortable for about a day," he said. "They usually have no idea what's going on, the owners or the pets."

Even when pet owners know their dog (or cat, iguana, ferret, horse or cockatoo — all animals vets had treated in the 2022 study) has consumed marijuana, they should visit the vet, he said.

If dogs aren't yet showing many symptoms, vets can induce vomiting and/or give the animal activated charcoal to prevent some of the drug's absorption, Kothenbeutel said.

Otherwise, vets give animals supportive care, such as fluids to help flush drugs out of their system or, if needed, anti-nausea medications, until symptoms resolve. That usually happens within 24 hours, Kothenbeutel said.

Miller, who racked up $1,600 in vet bills from the two times Tulip found marijuana, called discarded drugs "problematic for the city."

She said people frequently sit in their cars at Ragle Park smoking and some flick pot scraps into the parking lot.

In a thread on the social media app Nextdoor started by Miller, other Santa Feans shared similar experiences.

Karen Gaylord posted that her 7-month-old dog ingested discarded weed at the dog park, where she has seen "pot scraps" in the parking lot on several occasions. Gaylord encouraged efforts to spread the word about cannabis's impact on dogs.