Rover dose

The other day my five-year-old Labrador was diagnosed with acute cannabis intoxication. I had been taking Olga for a walk on Hackney Downs when she disappeared behind an abandoned railway. I imagined she had found some fox shit and was rolling in it delightedly. Bad pooch! On the way home she began to stumble and fall over; half an hour later she was virtually unconscious. With Olga disoriented and whimpering in the car we drove to a vet in Canonbury.

The vet took one look at Olga. ‘Very subdued. Seems almost sedated. Most likely it’s a case of oral marijuana poisoning.’ Marijuana? ‘It’s got nothing to do with me,’ I said. My chocolate-brown retriever was now zonked on the table. The vet asked me to wait upstairs while he administered a sedative preparatory to inducing Olga to vomit to see what she might have eaten. Slug bait would show up green in the regurgitation, he explained; rat poison, blue.