Happy Dog
AJ Robinson

Some foods are not safe or good indulgences for dogs. Years ago, I was warned that chocolate was not good for dogs and our dog Shakespeare had all kinds of food allergies. The poor dog would break out in the worst kinds of skin lesions, itch and scratch and be miserable for days when certain flowers were in bloom. We actually had to give him allergy pills! Our current dog Gandalf doesn’t do well with chicken.

We found dogs are susceptible to the effects of cannabis, too.

A friend, Elvy Musikka came for a visit. She’s quite the woman. She’s been on medical marijuana since the late 1980s, which means the U.S. Federal Government has been supplying her with three hundred marijuana cigarettes every month; every month.

While she was visiting us, she made use of a brand new bong. It was quite the nice one too: beautiful glass body, gold-tinted mesh and with a nice little bowl to hold the water. She used it several times during her visit, and tended to leave it on the coffee table, which was fine.

One night we went out to dinner. It was a wonderful meal, we met some friends and we talked about the movie that we hope to get funding for so we can tell Elvy’s life story. When we got home, we found that her new bong knocked on the floor.

The bong was next to the couch, its mesh was missing and its bowl was empty. We were all confused as to what had happened to it, but we worked to put it back together. We rinsed the base out, cleaned the bowl and searched for the mesh. It took us a couple days to find it, but it only took one day to figure out what had taken place while we were out.

Gandalf had gotten into the bong.

He’d somehow pulled it off the table. He got the mesh out and eaten the wet leaves on it and then drank all the water in the bowl. It didn’t take the intervention of Sherlock Holmes or a home security camera to find out what he’d done.

Poor little Gandalf had never experienced the effects of cannabis on his mind and body. We watched as he staggered about the room, bumped into the couch, chairs and finally flopped, doing a face plant, on the rug and right in front of the television cabinet.

He didn’t even make it to his doggy bed.

After that, he slept for about the next ten hours straight. When we got up in the morning, he was still in the same position. He woke when Jo Ann offered him his breakfast of bacon chewies. He raced for the kitchen! It seemed he was quite hungry. Can’t imagine where he got the munchies from, can you?

The whole rest of the day, he was little mister Energizer Bunny bouncing off the woodworking and eating about twice his weight in doggy snacks. I guess in future, if we ever want to calm the old boy down for the night, we’ll know what to give him.

We’ll just have to be prepared to deal with the fiery aftermath the next day. These days, what with medical and recreational marijuana coming to the forefront, who knows, we may have stumbled onto another market for edibles: dog treats!

There may be a business opportunity here.

I think it’s a winner. Huh, maybe I should form a company and go public. Hey, if we can go from marijuana being totally illegal to available for medical and recreational uses in most of the country in only a few years, who knows where we’ll be in another five to ten years.