Scott Maguire holds his phone up to the webcam and shows me the background of his phone. “I don’t have kids. I don’t have a wife,” he says. “I just have a dog.”
Bosie, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, was close to making it a year when, as a nine-month-old puppy, he was diagnosed with cancer in 2018. Maguire says Bosie inspired him to postpone retirement and set up his own UK-based medical cannabis company, Welford Medical, because he claims cannabis saved Bosie’s life.
If this origin story sounds a little too perfect, that’s understandable. I thought so too. But once I started looking into medical marijuana for dogs, Bosie’s story started to sound a lot more plausible. Maguire says Bosie’s vet told him he had lost his appetite and was so weak that chemotherapy and steroid treatments would have killed him quickly. The vet said they needed to euthanize Bosie or he would have died of starvation.
Courtesy of Scott Maguire
Maguire, who founded several healthcare companies, knew that cannabis could help cancer patients eat. So, in a last resort, he bought some cannabis from a ski instructor near his home in Switzerland. He cupped his hands around the dog’s nose and blew out smoke. Suddenly, Bosie was able to eat a little, Maguire says. Eventually, with dozens of “doses” of cannabis a day, Maguire was able to get Bosie healthy enough to treat him.
Don’t worry, Bosie is still alive six years later.
I was surprised to learn that Maguire had been feeding Bosie street weed, which contains THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana. If you have a dog, you’ve probably heard of CBD for dogs. CBD is the second largest compound in the cannabis plant, is not thought to have any psychoactive effects, and is sold as an herbal supplement for anxiety, pain, and insomnia. CBD products became widely available for dogs and humans in 2018 when the Farm Bill legalized cannabis products with less than 0.3% delta-9 THC content. Since then, the message has spread that CBD is fine for dogs, but THC is the worst.
This message is reinforced every time a dog eats someone’s weed chocolate bar. But if a dog accidentally becomes poisoned by cannabis edibles, they’re probably eating enough that a human would vomit. Many edibles contain other ingredients, such as chocolate or xylitol, that are dangerous to dogs, said Trina Huzzah, president and co-founder of the Veterinary Cannabis Association. Huzzah has learned from her own practice and her experience as an adviser to the Los Angeles Zoo that careful and conscientious dosing of cannabinoids, including THC, can make the difference between an animal’s life and death.
Haza began her career as a veterinary oncologist, treating pets with cancer through traditional methods like chemotherapy, radiation therapy and immunotherapy. “I realized I wasn’t doing enough for my patients,” she says. She began studying herbal medicine, which led her to cannabis.
Her first cannabis patient was a Jack Russell terrier with squamous cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer that causes tumors. The owner wanted to treat it with cannabis, so she researched and tried out products to see which would work best.
“Two weeks later, I got a letter from the doctor saying, ‘I think the tumor is getting better.’ And I was like, ‘No way.'” And sure enough, the dog’s tumor had shrunk. Hazza founded Green Nile in 2019 to educate pet owners about medical marijuana, and she continues to see that in a small percentage of cancer patients (she estimates 15 to 20 percent), cannabis helps shrink or maintain the size of their tumors.
To be clear, without clinical trials, it’s impossible to know for sure if it was cannabis that shrunk the tumors. But multiple studies have shown that cannabis can indeed significantly shrink cancer tumors in mice, according to a 2020 review paper published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. Whether it has the same effect in dogs and humans remains to be studied. Meanwhile, it’s well-documented that cannabis can help with cancer symptoms, such as nausea and loss of appetite, in humans.
Haza himself does not recommend using cannabis alone to treat cancer, as it is not as effective as traditional treatments, but says it can be effective when combined with other treatments, such as chemotherapy.
The science is still unclear on the effects of THC on dogs. Most of the research on medical cannabis for dogs has focused on CBD, likely because it is much easier to study legally. However, there have been some recent studies that have looked at THC. A 2024 case study published in the Journal of Veterinary Pharmacology and Toxicology found that a combination of CBD and THC improved one dog’s lupus symptoms. Several recent small studies have also looked at whether dogs can safely ingest THC and found that they can, in very small amounts. One study published in the same journal listed increased sensitivity to noise as a side effect, but did not include actual intoxication.
Haza says he’s seen THC cause paranoia in dogs. What does paranoia look like in dogs? They “bite the fly,” meaning they bite imaginary insects in the air.
Hannah Riley
My dog was lost for six days after being taken to the vet.
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I left California because of wildfires. Now my town is dealing with a whole different kind of disaster. The best feature of the Peacock Olympics is also the most controversial. There’s a very modern way to die while hiking. It’s a dark trend. Can you smoke marijuana with your dog? Of course you can.
Haza says it’s very important to be careful about the products you buy for your dog. While she can’t legally prescribe cannabis products, she instead gives pet owners advice on what to look for. First, it’s important to look for a detailed, up-to-date Certificate of Analysis. A COA is an official certificate issued by a third-party laboratory that examines the potency and content of a particular batch of cannabis product, whether it contains toxins like heavy metals, and more. Not all cannabis products include a COA. Haza recommends avoiding products that don’t include one.
“If companies aren’t going to be open about what’s in their products, about contaminants, about efficacy, it doesn’t make sense to me,” she explained. “Why would you use something you don’t know what it is?”
I wanted to know if she thought it was OK to give healthy dogs a little bit of marijuana just for fun, but Hazza says she sees no reason to recommend it. She uses cannabis to treat depression and anxiety in pets, but says that if your dog is happy and healthy, she sees no reason to give them something that could have negative effects. Unfortunately, from what I’ve researched, there’s no reliable catnip equivalent for dogs, but anise is something you could try.
As cannabis restrictions ease around the world, medical research will shed light on the plant’s true potential — and dogs like Bozzie may have a better chance at living a long, healthy life. life.
