The adventures of “pot dog” is the most Austin story ever - The Dallas Morning News

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Have you ever had the experience of talking to someone and knowing for a fact that that person is convinced you are lying? I can’t say that I ever had. Until last month.

It was a jolly holiday gathering. Our son. His girlfriend. Lots of yummy food. Too much yummy wine. In a dozy digestive stupor, my husband and I were about to find out who died on White Lotus when we sensed something was off. Our endlessly energetic dog, Collie, an 18-month-old corgi, was quiet. Too quiet, in the ominous way of slasher movies and unattended toddlers.

“Where’s the Big Booper?” I ask, using the nickname she’d earned for her relentless face booping.

I find Collie wobbling in a corner, glassy-eyed and drooling.

“She’s had a stroke!” I yell to George, my husband.

It’s past midnight when we reach the 24-hour vet’s office. I expect to be greeted by orderlies rushing out with gurneys, nurses holding defibrillator paddles and yelling, “Clear!” A doctor lassoing his stethoscope back around his neck as he commands his minions to, “Prep the OR! STAT!” would also have been nice.

Instead, the place is deserted.

“Hello!” I call out, a quaver in my voice.

Nothing.

After a couple more, increasingly frantic shouts, a receptionist ambles out whisking crumbs off her bosom. She takes one look and a knowing smile creases her face as she coos to Collie in an aggressively twangy East Texas/Ross Perot accent.

“Did baby get into something of mommy’s that she shouldn’t have?”

Her question — so casual, so insinuating, so out of left field — unnerves me.

“I think she’s had a stroke,” I say.

Utterly unconcerned, the receptionist continues, “We see this all the time. You’re the third case tonight.”

“Of stroke?”

Her eyes meet mine, the warm gaze chills, and she clarifies, “Marijuana toxicity. We’ve seen 400 cases this year.”

I blink once, twice, at the outlandish diagnosis and try to loop her back into current reality by repeating, “I think she’s had a stroke.”

Smiling the weary smile of a detective whose suspect refuses to abandon her patently ridiculous cover story, the receptionist sighs, and directs us to an exam room.

The vet, Erica Hartmann, enters, and with a calming reassurance says, “Let’s have a look.” She takes Collie from my arms, sets her on a counter and we both watch as my innocent pup staggers to her feet, eyes drooping at half-mast.

“What’s that look like?” Hartmann asks with the same bewildering casualness that the receptionist had shown.

The answer is that Collie looks like my stoner college roommate about to ask if we have any Doritos. But I refuse to give that answer. The implication insults me. “Do I look like a stoner?” I almost blurt out. But before I can, the answer booms out in my head, Yes! Yes, in fact I look exactly like all my gummy-gobbling, old lady friends dosing themselves with edible delights.

“But we don’t have any marijuana in the house,” I explain.

Hartmann nods in a professionally non-judgmental way. “There’s just so much marijuana in Austin. It’s everywhere. She could have eaten something on a walk.”

This feels like the moment when the detective gives the perp a chance to cop a plea.

“We didn’t go for a walk,” I say, starting to sound uncooperative even to myself.

With a patient smile, she takes Collie away to administer fluids and check vitals.

Alone in the exam room, my husband and I try to crack the case. Perhaps Collie got into our son’s girlfriend’s purse? We are still trying to solve the mystery when, just a smidge under $350 poorer, we carry our droopy dog out to the car.

“Well, that was an expensive high,” my husband concludes.

“But how?” I ask, wishing our car was wired so that the vet would know we weren’t lying.

Back home, George scours the house for the tiniest iota of an edible. I turn to Google for clues, and find an interview on the ASPCA’s Animal Poison Control Center site with the senior director, Tina Whismer, who informs us that in the past few years since pot has gradually been legalized around the country, the site has experienced a 400% increase in calls about what she terms the “pot dog.” Whismer attributes this rise to the dramatic increase in marijuana potency. “This isn’t your father’s weed.”

She also emphasizes how important it is to be honest with your vet. “Veterinarians aren’t going to judge. We’re not the drug police.”

The sweep of our house turns up nothing. Determined to solve this mystery while not being the “drug police,” I call our son and, borrowing the nonjudgmental tone of vets, I share our adventure and wait for him to admit to a gummy in a pocket, an edible in the purse. But no. And then, he remembers, “She wasn’t booping me. I was sitting on the floor and she was doing her usual thing, launching herself at my face, booping my nose, and then, all of a sudden, she stopped and started licking the bottom of my shoe.”

“Check your shoe.”

“There’s something gooey in the treads.”

“Gooey?” I ask. “Perhaps even ‘gummy?’”

“Yep, smells like marijuana.”

He’d been to a club and stepped on something of a cannabinoid nature; 20-pound Collie had licked enough to trigger all the dangerous symptoms we witnessed. We’d cracked the case.

The next morning, I wake up early to check on her. Collie opens her eyes and promptly boops me a good one. Relief.

Now to find out who died on White Lotus.

Sarah Bird is a novelist, screenwriter and journalist in Austin. Her latest book, Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, has been named among the best books of 2022 by the Texas Observer and the Austin Chronicle. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

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