Dog has bad trip after apparently ingesting cannabis on trail, needing a rescue after she couldnt walk

LONDON — Christina Bluhme was high on the flanks of Britain’s tallest mountain with her dogs, and one of the hounds was a lot higher — and not in a good way.Tokyo, a 5-year-old black Labrador retriever, had apparently ingested cannabis along the trail and had to be rescued after she began to sway like she was drunk and then couldn’t walk at all.“She had a very bad trip,” said Bluhme, who was mystified at the time about what nearly doomed her dog during the July 5 hike.“It was a very terrifying experience.”Bluhme knows a thing or two about dogs, having worked as a canine trainer for 25 years.

But she never suspected Tokyo might be stoned.While cases of cannabis toxicity in pets are rising in the UK, it’s an even bigger problem in the US, where marijuana has been legalized in many states and is available as a medical option in others.Marijuana and other drugs entered the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals top 10 list of toxins for pets for the first time in 2023.

Its poison control center said 10% more calls were related to potential marijuana ingestion than the previous year, and they had increased nearly threefold over the past five years.With the dog collapsed, Bluhme, her son and two dogs were more than three hours into their climb and near the peak of Ben Nevis, the 4,413-foot (1,345-meter) mountain in the Scottish Highlands.The weather, which had been clear at the start of the day, had turned to rain and the temperature had plunged to 41 F (5 C).She told her son, Magnus, that their quest to reach the summit was over.“I said, listen, we’ve got to turn around and get her down,” Bluhme said Monday.

“There’s something completely wrong here.”Her son called for help, but police said they weren’t sure they could send a rescue crew.Luckily for Bluhme and Tokyo, though, a crew from the all-volunteer Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team was already making their way down from the peak after helping a helicopter airlift a...