When “Denise’s” 12-year-old black Labrador Retriever Miles developed a tumor in his spleen that spread to his liver and lungs, the veterinarian gave him two months to live.
To cope with the pain, Miles’ vet prescribed a drug called tramadol, but Denise said she didn’t like the way the drug was affecting her furry friend. “Every time we gave it to him, he would just sleep; he wouldn’t even move. He’d just lay there like he was dead,” Denise said.
So when one of Denise’s friends suggested she give Miles medical marijuana — specifically a form of marijuana that is a vegetable-glycerin based tincture, which is sold as a pet medicine in many medical marijuana dispensaries in the Los Angeles area — she did.
Denise said that within an hour of giving Miles the prescription pot, his appetite returned and he stopped vomiting. Like younger children, medical marijuana for animals often comes in a liquid form, which owners can spread on cheese or bread.
“It couldn’t have been a coincidence,” she said, adding that since he began ingesting a form of medical marijuana, “Miles has been going to the beach, he’s been running, he’s being himself.
“If Miles was on the tramadol, he’d be in bed, and he wouldn’t be enjoying anything or eating anything, and he’d probably be dead. I’m just really grateful we found this.”
Although animals are a lesser-known group that benefits from medical marijuana, news of the drug’s benefits for pets has increased this past year, after Los Angeles-based veterinarian Doug Kramer began to publicly share success stories of animals treated with medical marijuana.
Kramer said he chose to speak out because he has no family that would be verbally or financially affected by his decision to talk publicly on the federally prohibited substance. “I grew tired of euthanizing pets when I wasn’t doing everything I could to make their lives better,” he said. “I felt like I was letting them down.”
Kramer said he first used medical marijuana to treat his own dog, a Siberian husky named Nikita, who had multiple tumors inside her body. Nikita had surgery to remove the tumors, but she was still in a lot of pain.
“Nikita was wasting away, and she’d stopped eating,” he said. “I’d exhausted every available pharmaceutical pain option, even steroids. At that point, it was a quality of life issue, and I felt like I’d try anything to ease her suffering.”
When Kramer gave his dog medical marijuana for the first time, he said Nikita stopped whimpering and began to eat, gain weight, and greet him at the door — just like she used to. Although Kramer eventually opted to put Nikita down six weeks after giving her medical marijuana, he says the drug helped his dog live her last few weeks pain free.
While Kramer may be seen as a leader in the efforts to legalize medical marijuana for pets, he doesn’t want to come across as being overly in favor of giving marijuana to pets.
“My position is the same as the AMA’s (American Medical Association’s). We need to investigate marijuana further to determine whether the case reports I’m hearing are true or whether there’s a placebo effect at work,” Kramer said. “We also need to know what the risks are.”
Veterinarians speak out and against medical marijuana
According to a report from the Associated Press, many veterinarians agree with Kramer that medical marijuana should be an option for pets, but most won’t speak on the record for fear they will either be arrested and/or retaliated against.
Dr. Duncan Lascelles is a professor of surgery and pain management at North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine. He said he considered studying the effects of marijuana on animals about 10 years ago, but opted to not pursue his research because the topic was more taboo than it is today.
But now that marijuana has lost the bulk of its taboo factor, with 58 percent of the public agreeing the substance should be legalized, Lascelles said he has considered researching the drug again. Yet any research would likely take at least 10 years to safely determine whether marijuana is a safe and effective drug — a time limit that Kramer said he is not comfortable waiting for, since millions of pets will die of illness and old age in the interim.
But not everyone is on board with prescribing medical marijuana for animals. Veterinarian John Sudduth has expressed concern about the high number of toxicity rates vets have seen in states like Colorado since voters chose to legalize marijuana.
Although two dogs have reportedly died in Colorado with marijuana in their system, some veterinarians say that the hallucinogenic reactions from marijuana use may make dogs “wobbly on their legs, raise their pulse, and cause dribbly urine.”
“There just hasn’t been enough research that has been presented to the medical community that would inform us to how to safely use medication such as marijuana. You’re really playing with fire. You don’t really know what you’re giving and what kind of side effects it could have. It could result in serious illness and it could result in death in some cases.
“Pets are not necessarily people in fur coats,” Sudduth added. “And how they metabolize medications and utilize medications those are all separate issues that have to be determined.”
Barry Kellogg, senior veterinary adviser to the Humane Society, agreed, saying “Sometimes public sentiment and activity gets ahead of the scientific background and that can be dangerous.”
Ethical treatment for animals
In a blog post for the animal rights group PETA, Dr. Amanda Reiman, the California policy manager for the Drug Policy Alliance, shared how she gave her cat, Monkey, medical marijuana after he was diagnosed with intestinal cancer.
“Having an animal companion is one of the greatest joys in life, and supporting him or her through illness and the end of life can be one of the most difficult times,” Reiman said. “As human caregivers, we want to know that the treatments we are giving our animal companions are effective, humane, and causing more good than harm. Given that our animal friends may not be able to show us how they are feeling with complete accuracy, we are often left to make decisions about their medical treatments based on advice and good intentions.”
Since Monkey’s tumors were inoperable, Reiman said she had to find a way to keep her “kitty” feeling as good as she could as long as possible.
Monkey’s cancer caused the 11-year-old cat to lose a lot of weight and suffer from insomnia, but when Reiman gave Monkey some medical marijuana, she started acting like a kitten again, able to eat and play, and acting like herself again, Reiman said.
“Even though I ended up losing her to cancer several months later, in that time I got to enjoy her for the kitty she was, not watch her slowly disappear before my eyes,” she said.
Reiman went on to explain how the ancient Greeks are believed to have used medical marijuana to treat their horses, and said that like medical marijuana for humans, medical marijuana for pets is a relief that human caregivers want for their animal companions.
Denise agreed, saying “People need to understand that this isn’t about getting my dog high. It’s about improving his quality of life.”