A Sudbury, Ont.-based animal rescue organization is sounding the alarm after seeing a steady increase in cannabis toxicity in dogs following the legalization of marijuana.
Petsave director Jill Pessot said that about every two months, she gets a terrified phone call from one of her foster parents.
“It’s at an epidemic level. It’s now happening daily in vet offices. As a rescue, we’re seeing it about every second month in a foster home,” she said.
“It’s not about which neighbourhood you live in. It’s throughout the entire city.”
One of the incidents happened last week.
Sarah Roy had taken her foster dog, Tori, for a walk around her neighbourhood in the evening. Later that night, she said Tori began acting strangely.
“The symptoms progressively got worse and more concerning. Tori started to be agitated. Walking in circles,” Roy said.
“I had reached out to Pet Save as I believed (that) Tori was exhibiting symptoms that required medical attention.”
Roy said when Tori’s head began bobbing around 2 a.m., she ended up calling Pessot.
“We’ve had ... dogs that come in comatose and require entire lipid treatment to absorb the cannabis,”
— Dr. Darren Stinson, veterinarian at the Chelmsford Animal Hospital
“I actually never had a situation where an animal has been really sick in my care, especially happening so late at night,” she said.
Tori is now doing well and has since been adopted.
Pessot said vet bills to deal with the cases have ranged between $2,000 and $3,000 in some cases.
“We’ve actually had to administer naloxone and admit one of our dogs in emerge because it was narcotics they had ingested. So, it can be very serious,” she said.
“Depending on the severity, it can actually cause death. So it’s a real risk. And we’ve had dogs die or come near death in our community from it.”
Dr. Darren Stinson, veterinarian at the Chelmsford Animal Hospital, said he’s also seen an increase in cases.
“We see a lot of it in Greater Sudbury,” Stinson said.
“We have an on-call rotation that’s made up of 11 different practices. And so we have about one weekend every six to cover when we’re on call and we usually see at least one each weekend. So, we see about six to eight a year … Prior to 2017, when it was legalized, we saw one every couple of years.”
Stinson said cannabis strains have become more potent, and symptoms range depending on the size of the dog and how much was ingested.
Symptoms begin after two hours
“We’ve had everything from dogs that come in comatose and require entire lipid treatment to absorb the cannabis,” he said. “(Some) dogs have hypermetric walking, dribbling of urine and neurological signs similar to that. So, it’s a wide gamut of different clinical signs depending on the dose.”
Stinson said symptoms typically start two hours after ingestion.
“The first thing you’re going to start to find is your dog is uncoordinated, appears to be intoxicated, has a strange gait where the limbs are stepping high and seem to be completely uncoordinated,” he said
“Sometimes you’ll notice dilated pupils or constricted pupils. You’ll also see intention tremors when you go to approach a dog’s face with your hand.”
Pessot said she is encouraging cannabis users to carefully discard any remnants in trash cans.
“Dogs’ sensitivities, of course, are far greater than ours. So we may not even smell or see it, and they will sniff it out of the ground and pick it up along their way,” she said.
“Dogs can be like a little vacuum cleaner, so we just want to make sure that people understand the harm it is causing in our animal world.”
She added to contact a vet immediately if there are concerns of a pet’s ingestion.
