Drugs and Dogs DON’T Mix

One day, we were having construction done at our house so we could put our garage up. We had a person who we are good friends with do it and his crew. He hired other people as well to do the concrete work. They have been at our house for about three days doing everything we need done before the garage goes up. They were doing an excellent job and getting it done as quick as possible. We left my dog Cali inside the house while they were doing all of this work so she wasn’t in anyone’s way. We would only let her out when they were on lunch break. At the end of the day, once they all left we let her out and that’s when it all happened.
So we let Cali out of the house and we were all looking at what they just did and how they did a great job with it. My dog was running circles around it and going inside it and having a blast. She was acting very normal because she does this all of the time. Then my mom and dad were both just cleaning up outside and doing stuff around the house and Cali was just there, hanging out. Then it started to get dark so we all went into the house. Cali went and laid on her bed which again is usual, but once we all are on the couch she finds a way to sneak in with us. My mom and I both left to go to the store and she was still in her bed. When we got back about an hour later is when this started to get unusual.
We get back from the store and whenever we come home, Cali is always there to greet us because she is so happy we are home, but this time she didn’t. Instead when we walked inside and my dad said that there is something wrong with Cali. Instantly I got a knot in my stomach because I didn’t want anything to happen to her. My dad said that she was having a hard time keeping her head up and kept dozing off then waking back up suddenly. So when we went over to her and went to go pet her it was like she didn’t know who we are. She was all scared and jerking her head every time we would get near her. We had no clue what was wrong with her. I was freaking out. So we quickly got her into the car and drove to the animal hospital. She was just laying there and we had to keep checking on her cause she wasn’t moving. When we got to the hospital we had to pick her up because when she walked, it was like there were things to step over and there wasn’t.
We finally get inside the place and fill out the paperwork. She was peeing everywhere. So before they went to wipe it up, they tried to get as much of it sucked up into a syringe as possible and asked us if they could test it. We said absolutely because we wanted to know what was wrong with her. Once all the paperwork was done we handed it back to the receptionist. She read it over to see what they were dealing with when she leans over the counter and asks “did she get into your stash?” My mom was like “what” and she said “your marijuana.” My mom was like “No we don’t do any of that!” Then my dad said that my brother just graduated from law enforcement and my mom is a school teacher. We don’t do any of that stuff. She said that those were all the signs of THC toxicity. We didn’t even know what that was. That’s when it got us thinking that the people who were at our house could have dropped something and she found it and ate it. My mom was furious. We finally get brought into the room and Cali was just roaming the small room. When she would stay still, she would sway back and forth like she was going to fall over. The nurse came in and checked on her and told us that she most likely has marijuana in her system. That’s when I started balling my eyes out because I didn’t know what that does to a dog. The nurse told me that she was going to be fine which kind of made me feel a little bit better.
The testing came back. She had THC in her system. We were all shocked. My mom was so mad because we take care of her so good and we are not even the ones who made her like this. The doctor came in and said that we can’t do anything, she has to just wait it out. He also told us to not let her climb on stairs or let her out loose because there was this one dog who was let outside and was so disoriented that he laid down and died of frostbite. So we kept an eye on her to make sure she wouldn’t wander off.
After we contacted our contractor and he questioned his workers, we found out that one of them had dropped an edible which Cali must have eaten. She will eat anything! We wanted to be sure that there wasn’t anymore on our property to make her sick again. They apologized, felt horrible and offered to pay the emergency vet bill.
When I think about it now, I think its pretty funny because she is the only one in my family to ever test positive for a drug test. At the time though I couldn’t laugh because I was too worried. Then my brother started making jokes which did make me laugh and it did make the situation much better because I knew she was going to be normal again soon. So that was the day my dog got high.

Photo by Emery_Way on Foter.com / CC BY