Where does Dazzle the goldendoodle get so much free weed? An investigation.

I can buy that if a dog eats a joint from the sidewalk, they might get sick. But lol omg the New York Times story today: Nausea, Wobbling, Confusion: Dogs Are Getting Sick From Discarded Weed

“In places where recreational use is legal, smokers are tossing the remains of joints in the street. Dogs are eating them and getting sick in increasing numbers, veterinarians and poison-control centers say.”

“There are no precise figures about the number of dogs picking it up on the street, but the data show they are getting sick from weed more often in places where recreational use is legal,” the article notes.

I mean … data usually involve numbers. So if there are no figures, what data are you looking at?

Seems legit.

The story goes on to tell us about Dazzle the goldendoodle. Since legalization a year ago, Dazzle has apparently gotten high from weed she found on the sidewalk ten different times.

On a recent weekend, Lola Star’s dog Dazzle, a mini goldendoodle just shy of 2 years old, ate a joint she found on the ground in Staten Island. It wasn’t the first or even the 10th time the dog had done this, Ms. Star said with a prolonged sigh.

She had not seen it happen but there was a telltale sign. “I was taking her out of the car, and I saw her little head bobble,” Ms. Star, who lives in the Prospect Park South neighborhood of Brooklyn, said. “That’s when you know your dog is stoned.”

Where is Dazzle getting all of this free weed? What’s her secret? The fucking dispensary that opened a few weeks ago in Manhattan had a line snaking out the door and down at least two city blocks. Where can I find all of this free weed just sitting around on the ground?

Do NYT reporters ever go outside? There is not a shit-ton of discarded weed on the sidewalk. Why would people just throw out drugs they paid for? I’ve seen my stoner friends suck on microscopic dregs of joints till they turn to dust.

Do I think that sometime in the entire history of the world a dog has gotten sick from eating drugs from the ground? Or that it’s more likely to occur now that high-potency marijuana is legal and widely available in some places? Sure, of course. Once, my uncle planted weed in my grandmother’s yard. One day, she let her chickens out of the coup and they pecked up the plants and stumbled about high AF.

My mom witnessed this. Maybe they got high. Or, maybe, she saw that they ate the plants, and then began to interpret standard weird chicken behavior as the hens being high.

Did Dazzle just get the zoomies?

Is Dazzle’s owner faking the whole thing? Might she have Pupchausen by proxy?

Or is she lying about Dazzle’s supply? I can imagine a scenario in which a stoner hippie lady forgets to lock up her weed and Dazzle develops a taste for it.

Anyway, the interesting thing here is that this isn’t the first story about dogs suffering the consequences of human drug consumption.

Remember Michelle Tandler, “The Meth Poop lady?” She does something related to finance and also built a social media following by depicting San Francisco as hell on earth, and blaming former DA Chesa Boudin.

“Last night at a party I met a woman who left San Francisco after her dog walker told her the dogs were getting addicted to meth-laced feces,” she wrote back in August. “Apparently they were running around the parks looking for it and then getting high.”

I think what’s happening here is that people think of their dogs as children (no judgement, I talk insane baby talk to my Chihuahua-terrier mix). And that these stories are the equivalent of Maude Flanders (Simpson’s reference) yelling,

“Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children!!?!!!”

There’s a bigger mystery than where Dazzle gets free weed (obviously her owner’s stash): Why is the New York Times drug coverage perpetually bad?

The Times helped catapult the crack baby myth into the public consciousness in the 1980s. Something like two decades later, they semi-apologized with reporting admitting that the phenomenon was not real. Then they pulled the same move with opioids, running articles about babies born “addicted” to drugs. Addiction is a complex behavioral phenomenon. Babies are not swiping wallets to buy heroin in an alley. And now, they’re actually credulously reporting that there is so much free weed just floating around (there is not) that dogs are getting high. Why is the Times coverage of drugs about at the level of Michelle Tandler, the Meth Poop lady? Coming soon, part two of an ongoing investigation.