DOGS ON DRUGS

How man’s best friend is getting high on Tik

Freya is a fit young dog with questionable eating habits that often land her in trouble. She is suspected to have twice got tik (crystal methamphetamine) poisoning after eating human faeces containing traces of the drug in Newlands Forest, on the slopes of Table Mountain.

She is among several dogs in Cape Town treated for ingesting drugs while outdoors, though other pets have been treated after getting intoxicated from their owners’ cannabis or anti-depression medication, say vets, who advise owners to be aware of the risks.

Dr Sharon Roos, who works at Belmont Veterinary Clinic, says: “The symptoms we are seeing fall into a pattern: the dogs looked spaced out and very, very out of it. I have only circumstantial evidence as we have not tested for specific drugs, but we are seeing a trend.

“Sometimes it feels like a lot of cases, with one or two a week,” she says, particularly over the summer holidays, but cases are less frequent usually.

Dr Ryan Niemand from Bloemfontein said he had seen only a single case of cannabis intoxication in an animal that ingested cookies years ago, while in Pretoria a case of amphetamine ingestion was reported at an animal hospital.

Gert Steyn, MD of the SA Veterinary Association, said pets face a greater risk from rat and ant poisons.

Freya’s owner Kate Larmuth says the first time her dog was exposed to tik the symptoms took an hour or two to become apparent. “We got home from the forest and she was just standing still, looking miserable and appeared drunk. Her head was bobbing and moving around and then she curled up into a little ball. She couldn’t control her bladder and, when she stood up, she was having tremors. It looked neurological so we took her straight to the vet.

“The first thing the vet asked was, ‘Were you in Newlands Forest?’,’’ Larmuth recalls of their late-night visit to the emergency vet.

With a case history and physical symptoms such as these, Roos suspected tik poisoning and treated the dog accordingly. Freya, then two, bounced back after being on a drip overnight and being fed charcoal for several days.

Tik is a stimulant that speeds up the functioning of vital organs and can cause damage to the central nervous system in humans.

The next time Freya got poisoned, she and a canine friend disappeared for a while and were licking their lips when they returned. “By the time we got back to the car they were both wonky and I recognised their symptoms,” Larmuth says. The pair recovered and now Freya is kept on a tight leash when they approach the bottom of the forest.

The risk to Hout Bay pointer Jazz was closer to home, after she ingested faeces containing cannabis in an open area where people squat near the Disa River. Her owner Jen Preen says: “Jazz was nowhere to be seen when I was feeding the dogs and I called and called.

“When Jazz arrived, she stood above the food on the ground wobbling and trying to eat air,” says Preen, who thought her 10year-old must be having a stroke. “When she jumped into the bakkie to go to the vet, she landed spread-eagled.

“She urinated on the floor at the vet,” she says, The vet collected urine for a drug test. Preen says the sample was “sky rocket high” for dagga and negative for four other drugs.

Dr Stephan Mauch from Penzance Vet, in

Hout Bay, says they have seen a couple of dogs affected by cannabis and sometimes clients will confess to missing some from their personal supply.

“We have seen dogs with strange neurological symptoms. We suspect that these dogs become poisoned after consuming human faeces, as some of these toxins are excreted in high amounts in faeces,” he says, advising owners to keep their dogs close in high-risk areas.

Menlyn Animal Clinic in Pretoria has treated about five dogs that ingested cannabis in the past few years and before that fewer than one case a year. But Dr Corne de Bruyn says: “We do see a lot of cases where the pet has ingested the client’s anti-depression medication. This happens almost monthly.”

Cannabidiol (CBD) oils can be hazardous too. “I have treated a cat given CBD oil which got very, very ill,” says Roos, who strongly recommends owners keep their prescription drugs away from pets.