So, I Got My Dog Stoned Last Night . . .

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Bean will be ten years old this spring. A few years back, I started a thread about storm anxiety in dogs, asking what I could do. Several Dopers offered the suggestions of getting a tranquilizer for her, and warned me that it would get worse over the years.

And how! It used to be that she was afraid when there was lightning. Then, all there had to be was thunder rumbling in the distance. Now it’s to the point that last week, we didn’t sleep for three nights because the wind was blowing hard.

So, I took her to the vet yesterday. He gave me a bottle of pills and sad that the dosage varies between dogs-- some are affected more than others-- and said I ought to give her a pill when I got home to see if one tablet would do it. He said she might be a little disoriented, and her eyes might look “a little weird.”

I hid the pill in a french fry. We all settled down for the evening, hubby and I playing video games, and Bean in her favorite place beneath the TV. About an hour later, Hubby said, “Man, I think she’s stoned. Look at her eyes!”

I was actually a bit alarmed. They looked more than “a little weird.” Her lower eyelids were sagging down, showing the red lining. She looked confused. She looked scared. (I got down on the floor to cuddle her to let her know everything was all right.) One of the younger dogs, Polaris, went over and licked Bean’s ears in sympathy-- something Bean would never tolerate if she were sober.

The poor thing couldn’t walk straight. When I took the dogs downstairs to let them out, she stumbled on the stairs, and the screen door whacked her in the head. She tried to jump up on the bed, and misjudged the height, ending up with her back legs dangling in the air, frozen in surprise. (Hubby helped her, with exclamations of sympathy.)

It lasted all night. After a few hours, her eyes started looking better, but she was still wobbly and confused. It wasn’t until this morning that she seems to be straightened up.

I felt so bad for her. It must have been frightening, because she had no idea what was happening to her. Next time a storm comes, I’m going to give her half a pill.

2

My oldest male cat has had problems when going to the vet’s. He becomes “Surly Cat” and wants a piece of whomever is trying to perform the vetty tasks. Once he became so het up that he passed out cold-one second he was threatening to “slice & dice” the vet assistant then he fainted the next.

So the vet recommended that I administer a Benadryl.

So I tried half a caplet. The cat decided to tell me,“Hey-I feel kinda odd. I am not sure I like this. I am just going to kinda lie down.” repeat repeat repeat for 45-120 minutes.

He told me nonstop about how loopy he felt the entire time. It helped that he did not feel it the need to be “Surly Cat”. But he did not enjoy the adventure at all.

I read somewhere that Man is the only aminal that purposely decides and makes the effort to become loopy/stoned/drunk/out of it.

3

What about catnip?

4

Interesting. Probably the fact that animals aren’t bright enough to distinguish the loopy/drunk/stoned/etc. state from reality, and get really confused and scared as a result, while humans are, and thus able to relax and enjoy it for a little while.

puffs

…I’m hungry. Where’re some nachos? wanders off

5

That goes against the koala, which is stoned on eucalyptus all the time. Or bears that enjoy getting stoned on fermented berries. (I don’t know how purposeful that is, but considering that fermentation changes taste, I don’t think it counts as an unaware dosing, either.)

6

And what about the drunken moose?

7

You have to love the dope, where the statement that “animals don’t do recreational drugs” gets 4 counter-examples in 3 hours.

8

So, is there something I can give my cats when I have to cut their nails? Just a little something to take the edge off, you know, so we can actually trim them like we need to without them freaking out. Or if it makes them pass out completely for an hour or so, that would work, too. :smiley:

(Kidding! Mostly - if you do know something that helps with trimming nails, feel free to share.)

9

Decades ago, a friend had an Irish Setter named Thor who would vigorously follow a joint around the room so that folks would exhale in his face. He really liked it, and it was hard to fend him off if you didn’t want to breathe smoke in his face.

Later, I had a terrier who liked beer. I had to keep an eye on him if I had a glass of beer he could get to. I was careful not to give him any, because it’s bad for dogs.

10

A week ago, our new Jack Russel, Sirius, drank whiskey. My husband poured a shot, and turned away for a moment. When he looked back, Sirius was happily lapping from the glass.

He didn’t get much-- just a few tonguefuls-- but I was astonished he would even try it. I’ve never seen a dog do that. Usually, the smell repells them.

11

Never underestimate the appeal of “people food.” :smiley:

12

Birds do the same. They’ll deliberately seek out the fermented fruits once they know they exist. I think (but don’t know for sure) that dogs and cats can learn to enjoy alcohol (beer especially).

Reminds me of a time when our cat was a kitten. She’d been sniffing around my husband’s beer, so he poured a few drops in the cap and held it out to her. She sniffed it, didn’t find it repulsive, and took a lick. The look on her face as she tried to get that taste off her tongue was hilarious. And we never had to worry that she would get near an unattended beer after that.

Unrelated story: She also had a bad problem trying to eat chocolate (which is as dangerous to cats as it is to dogs, IIRC,) which she eventually broke when she took a lick of melted chocolate that had dropped on the floor and burned her mouth. (I didn’t want her to break the habit that way; she was just so fast that we couldn’t clean it up faster than she could get to it.)

13

http://www.primates.com/misc/

14

We have a mulberry tree in back of our house that attracts lots of birds and squirrels when the berries are past prime and fermenting. The sound is absolutely raucous, and the critters act loopy.

Our ferrets try to drink anything that we have, fermented or not. Juice, wine, beer, coffee, soda, you name it. The taste of alcohol doesn’t scare them off, at least.

15

I had to give her another pill last night. My* God,* what a night.

I was having such an interesting dream, too! I was working with my husband in a prison annex they built on the wreckage of the Titanic. To raise money, we were having the inmates make cheese, and I was trying to get the Guiness Book of World Records to recognize the world’s first deap-sea cheese manufacturing center.

Suddenly, I was rudely shaken from my dream by a trembling sixty-eight pound dod leaping into the bed. I thought it was an earthquake. The hole bed shook with her trembling.

What was it? Fire? Intruder? Had the Russians invaded? No-- the wind was blowing. Goddammit.

I got up out of my warm bed and stumbled down the stairs to get her a pill. We’re out of bread. Out of hotdogs. Out of cheese. What the hell could I use to hide the pill? I stared stupidly into the fridge.

I opted for a Starburst. I pushed the pill into the candy as much as possible, and she ate it willingly. Ah! Success! Back to my warm bed.

I laid down and tried to fall back asleep. I was almost there when I heard it. “Urk. Urk. Urk!”

Polaris was standing by the bed, heaving. “Oh, no, puppy! Don’t puke!” I begged.

Too late. I spent ten minutes of valuable dream time wiping up doggy vomit.

It was four o’clock before I got back to sleep.

Stupid dogs.

16

hehe - i remember at university a friend stopped by to give me some of her birthday cake. It had the usual extras of university birthday cakes :smiley:

We chitchatted for a while and had coffee and whatnot - as they left i strolled out to the pavement with them to say goodbye. By the time i got back to the kitchen i found my kittens snacking away on hash-cake :eek: Other than being very sleepy it didn’t seem to affect them too much. Though i did have to spend the day indoors to make sure they were ok. What puzzles me is that they went straight for the wrapped cake when there were plenty of other things they liked around the place (they had a thing for bread and cheese at the time).

17

My brother once gave our cat a square of LSD.
After that she completely lost her balance. Would try to jump from chair to chair and land on the floor. We were pissed at him.

18

I had a dog that loved tequila. It was the only strong drink he’d steal if you weren’t careful.

19

Oh, man, how I do hate that particular noise. And it’s always when I’m in bed too.

I got my cat high once with a pain pill. Poor guy, his pupils got really big and he stood still as a statue staring into space for at least an hour. Freaked me right out.

20

They may simply have liked the smell of cannabis. We have two cats. One is mostly indifferent to catnip. The other likes catnip a lot, but loves marijuana. Anything that smells like pot sets her off on a frenzy, and she absolutely insists on being in the room if I’m smoking (which is rare, Mom, if you’re reading).