Vets Are Begging You to Keep Your Dogs Away From Your THC Gummies

With weed becoming legal in some way or another across the United States, veterinarians are begging, pleading with people to please be careful about how they store marijuana and THC products because dogs are getting into them and getting stoned out of their poor little doggy brains.

Sure, the weirdos among you might read that think that sounds awesome. It is decidedly not, however, since dogs’ brains are not built to handle THC, especially in the amounts that some are accidentally consuming.

THC can adversely affect a dog’s central nervous system. If a dog swallows a few 10 mg gummies, they can start stumbling around, pissing all over the place, their faces can droop like they had a stroke, their eyes can dilate, and some of them can even get seizures. The symptoms can crop up within an hour of ingesting THC in any form, whether it be a gummy or some bits of bud lying around.

Vets, especially emergency vets, all over the country say incidents of dogs ingesting THC products have skyrocketed, with some saying they’re getting multiple cases of marijuana poisoning a week. And yes, it is classified as poisoning because the ingestion of THC can lead to effects that resemble poisoning in dogs like vomiting and lethargy. It’s especially true for small dogs who really cannot handle their high.

Thankfully, treatment is pretty simple and effective. If you’ve ever seen those videos of vets making dogs puke after they eat a bunch of chocolate, you get the idea. They’ll add in some activated charcoal to help absorb some of the toxins before they get absorbed into the dog’s system.

If you want some numbers on how prevalent the issue has become, check this out: between 2009 and 2019, the ASPCA reported an absolutely unbelievable 765 percent rise in incidents where dogs ingested THC. So if you don’t want your dog to suffer the ill effects of being way too high, keep your THC products in the child-safe packaging you bought them in, and then keep those in high, hard-to-reach places inaccessible to your furry friends.