HAMBURG, N.Y. — It seems cases of dogs ingesting marijuana, whether it's in their owner's home or on a walk outside, is not uncommon in Western New York.
Susan Murkowski of Orchard Park reached out to us after she was walking her dog in East Aurora on Sunday.
Her dog Teddy, a 10-month-old Goldendoodle, accidentally swallowed some form of pot. She doesn't know whether her dog accidentally ate an edible or whether it was a bud.
Teddy just started to get very tired and wouldn't stop urinating.
Murkowski took him over to the Village Veterinary Clinic of Hamburg because she was so worried and didn't know what was going on with Teddy.
That's when the clinic found the THC in Teddy's blood.
Murkowski says she wishes people would be more careful because not only was she worried about Teddy, but she also walked away with an $800 bill because she needed to find out what was going on.
According to the Village Veterinary Clinic of Hamburg, this isn't the first time a pet has swallowed a form of marijuana by accident.
"It kind of can vary a little bit, so we've definitely seen an uptick since the legalization of it and things like that, but we see maybe a few times a month that they're coming in for the toxicity for sure," said Sarah Sears, a vet tech at Village Veterinary Clinic of Hamburg.
"(THC) can definitely affect (pets) a lot, so if they're ingesting it, they can have a lot of neurological signs so they definitely can be very wobbly, uncoordinated, not able to walk. They have a urinary incontinent so they can't control their bladder. They can have changes in their heart rates. They can even go into a seizure or coma, things like that in an extreme circumstance," Sears added.
Katie Belling and Steve Procknal of Buffalo had a similar situation when their bulldog Julian, who's also a service dog, ate an THC gummy while out on a walk near Delaware Avenue in downtown in October.
"It's a really terrifying thing to go through because you just don't know what's going on with your animal," Belling said.
Procknal added: "Not only is it traumatic, but it's also expensive. It's not like you can wait, you have to take care of that right away. It's not a cheap thing to happen as a pet owner, so I wouldn't want anyone to go through as well."
Sears says some of the cases that the Village Veterinary Clinic of Hamburg sees also include pet owners who have had marijuana in their homes.
Renee Zaccarine of Elma was out of town last July.
She says while her nephew was watching her Australian Shepherd, he left his pot out in the open and her dog Dexter ate it.
"(Dexter) was 3 years old and he almost died. (The vet) said if he was an older dog, he wouldn't have made it," Zaccarine said.
Sears says Village Veterinary Clinic of Hamburg hasn't had any cases of dogs dying from accidentally swallowing marijuana. She says the size of a dog can impact how their body reacts to THC, which means their symptoms can differ.
Extreme cases can include a seizure or even a coma, while Sears says milder cases will include sudden, neurological changes and frequent urinating and possibly vomiting.
"It's something that's preventable if people would just be careful when they're doing it," Zaccarine said.