BELOVED dogs were "staggering all over the place"’ after being suspected of ingesting cannabis left on a Pencaitland path this week.
Dog owner Nell Hogg is now eager to make sure that others are aware of the risk.
On Tuesday evening, she was walking her two working cocker spaniels, Archie and Evie, off the railway path near Huntlaw Bridge.
Her partner spotted in his head torch that they were eating something on the ground but didn’t think much of it, since it is not unusual for them.
However, when they got home, she noticed the dogs' unusual behaviour and that their “eyes were a bit weird”.
Nell told the Courier: “They were both really jumpy and flinching, when you moved your arm or something they would jump out of their skin, which was really bizarre.
“The black one jumped off the sofa and fell on her side. She just couldn’t stand up and was staggering all over the place.
“The golden one was just a space cadet, his eyes were not right."
Nell was concerned so phoned Links Vets in Haddington, who told her to continue to monitor them, so she stayed up all night to keep an eye on them both.
She said: “I knew that something was wrong because they hadn’t been sick. I would have expected if they’d eaten something disgusting that there’d be a mess in the kitchen.
“I just knew there was something different, there was something not right.”
By 6.30am on Wednesday morning, Archie became “really ill” and was admitted to the vets.
The vets asked Nell if she wanted Archie to be resuscitated if the worst happened and he took a turn for the worse.
She said: “They did say that, depending on how much he’d eaten, that it would be 24 to 48 hours for the worst of it and that he should be okay. They suspected it was cannabis.”
Archie was released from the vets yesterday (Thursday) with a prescription for liquid charcoal to “flush it out of his system”, which costs £50 per bottle.
Evie was put on a drip and his owners were told to “let nature take its course”.
In total, the vet bill came to £923.
Archie and Evie are both now out of the woods and Nell is keen to warn other dog owners about the risks of cannabis poisoning.
She said: “People don’t twig that ingesting cannabis is toxic to dogs, but also the symptoms to look out for.”
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