Are dogs in Phibsborough overdosing on drugs?

Both woman and dachshund are wrapped up in their own raincoats. Aisling Donnelly’s is bright pink. Rockstar’s is dark navy.

Draped around Donnelly’s neck is a long red scarf. Around Rockstar’s, a matching red dickie bow.

The pair follow the path that loops around the big duck pond in the middle of Phibsborough’s Blessington Street Basin. 

The path is flanked, along both the water’s edge and the wall, by flower beds and bushes. 

Hanging from an unoccupied bench is a white plastic bag with beer bottles, food packaging, and what look like the remains of cannabis joints.

More joint leftovers and cigarette butts are strewn around the flower bed behind the bench.

Donnelly stops by the corner of the park furthest from the main entrance. She points to a tree.

It was around that spot in December that she saw her dog sniff and lick at what appeared to be human faeces.

She has witnessed people many times dropping their trousers, crouching down and relieving themselves around the basin, she says. “Sometimes I’ve shouted at them. Other times I just broke down in tears.”

Rockstar’s nose was in it only briefly, she says, before she realised what it was and pulled him away.

But within minutes, Rockstar began vomiting heavily, says Donnelly.

Diarrhoea soon followed and he became extremely lethargic. His balance seemed to go as well, she says.

When she brought Rockstar to the overnight Pet Emergency Hospital at UCD, the vets found fentanyl and cocaine in his stomach, she says.

The bill for Rockstar’s treatment was over €400.

Other dogs in the area have experienced similar symptoms, often after a rummage around some bushes – many a dog’s favourite pastime, says Donnelly.

Similar reports have come in from dog owners on local WhatsApp groups, says Pauline Cadell, a member of the local BLEND Residents Association.

Cadell’s own dog, a brown springer-poodle cross named Coco, had identical symptoms to Rockstar a few months back and needed medical attention, she says.

It was also after sniffing around what Cadell soon realised was likely human excrement. 

Tests on Coco were inconclusive, she says. But the theory going around the area, says Cadell, is that dogs are overdosing after they ingest drug-laced human faeces.

That is technically possible, says Ciara McGrath, an ICU clinician in the UCD Vet Hospital, which operates during the day – but it’s unlikely. 

The chances?

The likelihood of dogs getting ill from cocaine or fentanyl intoxication – as found in Rockstar’s stomach – because they have ingested vomit or faeces from drug users is very small, says McGrath. 

Both drugs are mainly excreted in the urine of users, she said, with around 10 percent excreted in faeces.

Cannabis, however, is mainly excreted in faeces, she says.

Rachael Creedon’s dog Layla also fell ill shortly after a walk around Blessington Street Basin late last year, she says, and was rushed to the emergency hospital.  

As a husky-labrador cross, she is a much bigger dog than Rockstar or Coco.

Layla showed symptoms like lethargy and loss of balance – but not the vomiting. “She was just absolutely out of it suddenly,” says Creedon.

Creedon brought her to UCD but after a long wait on a slammed night in the pet hospital, Layla began to come back around. “Whatever it was seemed to be leaving her system.”

Hospital staff said that, as she was improving, she was unlikely to be seen by an emergency vet that night. They suggested going to the local vet in the morning, says Creedon.

Creedon says Layla didn’t have any tests done to confirm, but that her own vet told her the next day that it sounded like the pooch had ingested drugs somehow and had probably been “seeing purple elephants”.

If a dog is becoming ill from a drug, it’s more likely accidental ingestion of a drug stash, says McGrath, the veterinary ICU clinician.

Cadell says that Gardaí have told her at meetings of the BLEND Residents Association that drug users often stash supplies in a park or similar, rather than keep it with them.

Shane Nangle, a veterinarian with Killester Vets, says he once treated a dog who had overdosed on ivermectin, a horse dewormer medication, after eating horse manure.

But while he hasn’t treated dogs who overdosed on fentanyl, cocaine or cannabis from eating human faeces, he says, dogs getting into drug stashes is relatively common.

How to know?

Signs of toxicity will depend on the drug, says McGrath.

Cocaine causes hyperactivity, shaking, agitation, panting, and potentially seizures, she says. Fentanyl may cause dullness and respiratory depression.

Vomiting and diarrhoea are not common symptoms of cocaine or fentanyl intoxication – although still possible, she says.

Those are symptoms more often seen in dogs that have ingested cannabis.

If dogs are scavenging around, they may also ingest old and mouldy food, which can cause a condition called neuromycotoxicosis, McGrath says.

Dogs will rapidly become ill following ingestion of the food, she says. “Usually starting with shaking, progressing to whole body tremors, vomiting, hypersalivation, with some severe cases developing seizures.”

Other issues at play

A multitude of problems have led to those dogs getting sick, says Fine Gael Councillor Gayle Ralph.

“It's all to do with addiction, incorrect housing and incorrect policing. That’s my personal opinion,” she said by phone last week.

Police presence in the city centre has grown recently, she says, so drug dealing and use has been pushed out of town and landed in nearby neighbourhoods like Phibsborough.

Ralph says that she and her council colleagues have been pushing for more regular garda patrols. “They have increased their patrols, but it's still not enough.”

There is also an “over-intensification” of homeless hostels in the area, including “wet hostels” which cater to people with addictions, she says.

As government moves to scatter city centre homeless services, is it a good idea?

“Focus Ireland would prefer energies went into ending homelessness rather than moving around its victims,” says Mike Allen, director of advocacy.

Dublin InQuirerLaoise Neylon

From her ongoing volunteer work with people who are homeless, and those living with addictions, she says she is familiar with the struggles people can face.

She doesn’t like seeing people with addictions being housed in the same places where they had initially gotten into trouble, she says.

“They need to be going into another area where they're away from their old contacts,” Ralph says.

Cadell says that, in general, she wants to see more dog parks – spaces for dogs to run free and safe – around Dublin.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.