Marijuana poisoning on the rise in pets

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/your-dog-drugs-marijuana-poisoning-rise-pets-2D11959080

Brian Alexander NBC News
Jan. 21, 2014

Please don’t let your dog drink the bong water.

Calls reporting pet poisonings by marijuana have increased by about 30 percent since 2009, from 213 calls that year to 320 in 2013, according to the Animal Poison Control Center, a division of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Those calls probably represent only a fraction of poisonings related to cannabis.

In Boulder, Colo., where marijuana recently became legal, Dr. Matt Booth said his veterinary emergency center sees about a case a month. The episodes are usually accidental, he said, but even if some were deliberate, “and some ding-a-ling gave his dog marijuana, they wouldn’t tell me that” because of local animal cruelty laws.

Dr. Monica Kaeble of the Pet Emergency and Specialty Care Center in La Mesa, Calif., adjacent to San Diego, told NBCNews.com her practice sees more, about one or two cases of cannabis poisonings per week.

Marijuana doesn’t agree with dogs — and though cats can also be poisoned by second-hand smoke, dogs seem more apt to root through their owners’ stashes.

“Animals don’t react the same way as humans,” explained Dr. Tina Wismer, director of the Animal Poison Control Center. “They may become sedated, act drunk and wobbly, but about 25 percent go the other way. They become agitated, have high heart rates, they’re in distress. Most dogs become incontinent. They stagger around dribbling urine everywhere.”

Blood pressure can soar. Without treatment, dogs can go into comas and die.

Bong water (yes, really) is only one way animals can access the active ingredients in marijuana. While dogs can, and do, eat plant material, including marijuana leaves, serious poisonings more often result from edibles prepared by owners for their own use.

-----

Users then make brownies or cookies with the butter, and dogs, being dogs, and loving brownies and cookies, may scarf them down when a pet owner isn’t looking.

In the case of brownies, that’s doubly dangerous. Chocolate, a heart and nervous system stimulant in dogs, is one of the leading causes of dog poisonings in the U.S. Last year, the ASPCA poison control center received 9,200 calls related to chocolate poisoning, dwarfing the number of calls for marijuana.

But cookies can be doubly dangerous, too, Booth said. He’s seen cases of dogs ingesting marijuana-laced raisin oatmeal cookies, but the real problem wasn’t so much the marijuana as the raisins, which can be toxic to dogs, causing kidney failure.

Other frequent poisonings involve human medications, pesticides, and ethylene glycol anti-freeze.

The increasing availability of marijuana due to legalizations may be one reason why pet poisonings have gone up.

-----

If your dog shows signs of wobbliness, incontinence, is hyper reactive to sound and sights, has seizures or signs of hyperthermia, you can call the ASPCA’s poison control center at (888) 426-4435, a local emergency animal hospital, or your usual vet.