Dog owners need to be careful about what their pets pick off the ground and eat, says a Whitehorse woman whose dog ingested pot while out for a walk along the Millennium Trail.

Liz Reichenbach said Thursday she had taken her dog recently for a drink of water along the Yukon River behind the White Pass and Yukon Route depot on Front Street.

Kluane, her 5 1/2-year-old medium sized husky, picked something off the ground and ate it.

She suspects it was a marijuana brownie, judging by the black stuff hanging from her mouth, and by what happened later.

About an hour or two later, she noticed her dog was acting a little strange, and was falling sideways, she told the Star.

Reichenbach said her dog looked as though she was going to have a seizure, and was catching herself from falling sideways.

“It looked like she was drunk,” she said.

Reichenbach said she let her dog go out to do her business but she couldn’t get it together to pee or poop.

She said a veterinarian told her Kluane had gotten into marijuana, and that they were seeing a lot of that.

Reichenbach said she does not believe the marijuana was left there intentionally; that it likely fell to the ground accidentally, perhaps while someone was rolling a joint.

It does not, she emphasized, take much to affect a dog.

It’s important to relay her story just to raise awareness among dog owners and among those people who might be out smoking or rolling a joint – be careful, she said.

Reichenbach said the vet believes dogs ingest marijuana in areas where people congregate to visit, and perhaps smoke a joint together.

Kluane was fine about 18 hours later.

Somebody told Reichenbach that they knew of a dog that had vomited and aspirated after presumably ingesting pot.

She said she is worried pot that ends up in the landfill for one reason or another is also being eaten by animals.

There should be a safe place to dispose of marijuana or left-over marijuana products just like there is a safe place to dispose of syringes, she suggested.

Reichenbach said if somebody finds pot on the ground and they want to dispose of it, they need a safe place to bring it.

“For the powers that be, let’s find some way to safely discard pot products,” she said.

An online article by veterinarian Wendy Brooks says the usual pet toxicity cases involve dogs that have inadvertently eaten marijuana.

Clinical signs begin 30 to 90 minutes after the drug is ingested and can last for days, as THC is stored in the body’s fat deposits.

The article says if fewer than 30 minutes have passed since the pot was eaten, it may be possible to induce vomiting.

After symptoms have started, however, it becomes difficult to induce vomiting.

It says the chance of the dog dying are statistically small, but possible. In most cases, the pet is confined to prevent injury until the THC wears off, the article says.

It notes signs of ingestion include incoordination and listlessness along with dilated pupils, slow heart rate and sometimes urinary incontinence.

A characteristic startle reaction has been described where the pet appears drowsy and even may begin to fall over but catches balance, says the article.