A black labrador had to be rescued from the UK’s highest mountain after falling seriously ill when she ate cannabis, her owner has said.
Five-year-old Tokyo became unwell and even lost consciousness several hours into a hike up Scotland’s Ben Nevis last Sunday, according to her owner Christina Bluhme.
“She’d been so happy eating treats and drinking and had been her very active normal self,” Bluhme, a professional dog trainer, told CNN on Monday. The two had been trekking alongside Bluhme’s 17-year-old son Magnus and their two-year-old golden labrador, Blaze.
Then things took a dramatic turn as they approached the peak of the mountain, which stands at 4,413 feet (1,345 meters).
“We were maybe an hour from the top when we noticed Tokyo got really weak in her hind quarters,” said Bluhme.
“Initially, I thought it could have been a spinal thing or a disc that had slipped because of the climb, but then she started drifting in and out of consciousness. I was standing on that mountain thinking that that was it, I was going to lose her.”
Bluhme initially tried to carry Tokyo down, but at 24 kilograms (53 pounds) that proved too difficult – especially as they were being drenched by heavy rain.
Eventually, a fellow hiker suggested that she call the emergency services, which dispatched a mountain rescue team to assist.
Fortunately for Tokyo, Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team volunteers were close by, having just attended another emergency at the summit.
“They put her on a stretcher, I grabbed one side and we got her down the mountain,” said Bluhme. From there, she drove Tokyo to a nearby vet.
The vet immediately recognized Tokyo’s symptoms as being caused not by pain but neurotoxicity, according to Bluhme.
“She had all the symptoms of consuming cannabis and had her blood tested too. What really gave it away was when she had her temperature taken she let out some gas and it smelled completely like cannabis. It was almost like standing beside someone smoking weed,” she said from her home in Surrey, in the southeastern England.
“It’s not funny, but it was a bit funny,” she added.
Posting about the episode on Facebook over the weekend, Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team said they had been called “to assist a collapsed dog.”
Confirming that Tokyo had since “made a full recovery,” they added: “It’s now suspected that Tokyo, a usually very fit and active working dog, had ingested something that made her critically unwell.”
Staff at Crown Vets in nearby Fort William hooked Tokyo up to an IV infusion and gave her activated charcoal, which works by absorbing the toxins. When Bluhme returned to collect her the following day, Tokyo was much better.
“She was wagging her tail very happily and was ready to go. And the day after you wouldn’t have thought that this had happened to her,” she said.
The vet told Bluhme, who had never previously heard of dogs consuming cannabis, that Tokyo most likely ate an edible that had been dropped along the trail – or human waste containing traces of cannabis.
Bluhme says she’s since been overwhelmed with messages from other animal lovers who say something similar happened to their dogs.
“I learned a lesson in terms of dogs scavenging,” she said. “I’ve never put too much importance on it… they love sniffing and foraging. But I’m definitely going to be a little bit more careful about what they put their nose into in future.”
