As the legal marijuana market continues to expand, our four-legged companions have unwittingly gotten caught up in the cannabis craze. While there are plenty of CBD products for dogs and cats on the market, an unintended — and negative — consequence of the expanding business has been animal ingestion of psychoactive THC products.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (known for its Sarah McLachlan-assisted ugly-cry commercial) reports that its 24-hour Animal Poison Control Hotline saw a 765 percent increase in marijuana-related calls between 2008 and 2018. THC products are usually dosed for much larger humans; when they're accidentally ingested by pets, they can cause problems, sometimes major ones. A study of 125 cannabis-related veterinary hospital admissions in Colorado found that two small dogs died after getting into medical-grade THC edibles.