That time when the dog got stoned

As I usually do in early July, this last summer the dog and I headed off to the hinterlands of northern Nevada.  The trip is timed to allow us to get far from civilization to spare Shadow the horrors of fireworks.  This years trip took us across central Nevada to Ruby Lakes Wildlife Refuge, then back west to Sheldon Antelope Refuge, north to the forests NE of Burns, Oregon, and back home with a stop in the Warner Mountains of northern California, for a total of 9 days.

July 2 found us up Jack Creek, in the Independence Mountains northeast of Elko.  I first visited this remote canyon in August of 2018, when the baby birds had already fledged and were busy learning how to be birds.  I wanted to come back a little earlier in the year to see what was going on.  There is a very small campground that I stayed at in 2018, but this time it was occupied by a couple of large RVs.  Nearby dispersed sites were also occupied.  So I continued driving up the canyon to see if there were any more possible camp sites.  A mile or so above the campground, I ran into a huge flock of sheep, being carefully guarded by a couple of Great Pyrenees.  Many of the sheep were parked in the road, so it was slow going to try to encourage them to stand or lay somewhere else.  I finally made it through the flock, continued on up the canyon, and found a nice little campsite near the stream.  It was still pretty early in the afternoon, so Shadow and I went exploring, and I looked for potential places to set up some microphones for overnight recording.

I need to pause at this point in the story and explain something about Shadow.  He likes to eat poop.  Not just any poop, he avoids most carnivore poop, but likes to sample any horse or cow poop he comes across.  But by far his favorite is people poop.  He is totally obsessed with it.  The more I’ve attempted to train him not to, the more determined he is to find and consume it.  I’m convinced he thinks his job is not to herd sheep or cattle or any other critter, but to rid the world of people poop.   Although I find this habit incredibly disgusting, most veterinarians don’t seem too concerned, and some even suggest that it may have contributed in the evolution of dogs from wolves.  So most of the time when we arrive in camp, I immediately put Shadow on a chain, to keep him from finding every bit of shit that is normally found in dispersed camping areas, where people often exhibit less than stellar bathroom habits.

But on this trip to Jack Creek, the campsite we pulled in to showed little evidence of recent occupancy.  Shadow loves to play in shallow streams, so I let him play while I searched for potential recording sites.  It was late afternoon by the time I got back to camp, and a few minutes later, Shadow came splashing down the stream.  I fed him his dinner, and noticed he was a bit wobbly and having trouble standing.  He seemed to want to get in the car (his safe place), so I helped him load up, and started getting ready to cook dinner.  When I checked on him a few minutes later, he was staring off into space and his pupils were dilated.  He’d obviously got hold of something toxic.  My first thought was toad poisoning, but it wasn’t presenting like that (foaming at the mouth, vomiting).  He’d been eating grass as he played in the water, so I though perhaps he inadvertently chomped on a toxic plant, like water hyacinth.  I didn’t know it at the time, but the symptoms of that also didn’t fit, as they include excessive drooling, agitation, rapid heart rate, and difficulty breathing.

I continued to monitor his condition as I prepared dinner.  He soon fell into a deep sleep.  And then this happened:

You know something is wrong with your collie when more than 2,000 sheep can go singing by camp and he sleeps through the whole thing.  It took about 20 minutes for the flock to get past camp.  The Pyrenees came and checked me out, and the heelers accompanying the shepherd did too.  Then they got back to work and moved the sheep on up the canyon.  The shepherds set up camp for the night about a half mile above my camp, which was a bit worrisome as I didn’t know which way they would head in the morning.  I had planned to set up one set of mics on a tripod out in the sagebrush north of camp, but a flock of sheep could easily knock over a tripod and stomp on the mics.   I was also trying to figure out if I should try to get Shadow to a vet, taking a 2 hour drive to Elko and hoping I could find an emergency vet on the Friday night before the 4th of July weekend.  He didn’t appear to be in distress, so I opted to let him sleep it off and reassess in the morning.

I set up the mics in a little side canyon below camp, and attached them about 6 feet up on an aspen tree.  Even if the flock came back, the mics should be safe.  As darkness settled, and I was getting ready to retire, Shadow sat up and puked, then passed out again.  I cleaned up his mess and climbed into my sleeping bag.  I checked on him periodically during the night – his breathing was slower than usual, but steady.  When I awoke in the morning, he was staring at me with his normal bright and shiny eyes – his usual method of saying he wants his breakfast.  We got out of the car and he scarfed down his food.  He was still a little weak, but his pupils were normal size and he appeared to be his usual happy self.  I walked him around camp a bit (on a leash), as he sniffed the remnants of the flock of sheep’s passing through.  Did he wonder what he missed?  After I collected the mics and had breakfast, with no more sign of the sheep, we continued on our journey.  He appeared to completely recover by that evening, and he was fine the rest of the trip (no more playing in streams, though).

And I did manage to get a nice recording of the dawn chorus, with Jack Creek in the background:

It wasn’t until I returned home when a Facebook post caught my attention.  Apparently dogs can get marijuana toxicity from eating the poop of people who have ingested THC.  The symptoms matched what I saw in Shadow, far better than toad or water hemlock poisoning.  THC poisoning from directly consuming marijuana (usually in some form of edibles) can create serious problems in dogs, but getting it secondhand through poop isn’t quite as bad.  And the treatment is usually to let them sleep it off and keep them hydrated.

Shadow was lucky enough to have a safe place to sleep off his stupor.  But I wonder about the wildlife that consumes TCH-laced poop.  Lots of animals will eat human poop, from skunks to coyotes, and it seems to me that if they get a little too high from eating poop, they might be vulnerable to getting eaten by a bigger predator.

So if you are going into the wilds to get high, or get high then go into the woods, please be very careful about burying your poop.