Las Vegas councilwoman’s dog ingests THC before vote on pot shop

Las Vegas City Councilwoman Victoria Seaman’s dog got sick after ingesting THC from an unknown source this week, just a few days before the council voted to keep a marijuana dispensary from opening in a former animal hospital building.

The dog was not stoned, he was suffering, Seaman said during a phone interview Friday. Starting Monday night, the dog — an 18-month-old French Bulldog named Blu Theo — was paralyzed at times, and his muscles contracted. He couldn’t eat or drink and had problems sleeping, she said.

By Friday, Blu was back to normal.

“I thought the timing was really weird,” Seaman said.

Two days earlier, the council unanimously denied Nevada CRT a special use permit to set up a dispensary at the corner of West Sahara Avenue and Fort Apache Road.

The dispensary would have been in Ward 2, the councilwoman’s ward. With the majority of the city’s dispensaries located in the urban Ward 3 east of Interstate 15, the Nevada CRT dispensary would have been the first dispensary to open in the more suburban area near Summerlin.

Seaman said it did not belong in the neighborhood, and most residents who weighed in on the proposal also voiced opposition to the dispensary.

The councilwoman said she kept the dog’s THC sickness out of the public eye out of concern it might tarnish her stance against the dispensary because she’s been vocal against the dispensary well before this week’s vote.

“I was trying to keep it quiet, because we were voting on this,” she said. “I did not want anybody to think that poisoning my dog was going to influence me in any way.”

Seaman said she filed a report with the Metropolitan Police Department on Tuesday. City spokesman David Riggleman late Friday shared the report number and the Review-Journal has requested a copy.

Seaman stressed that she does not know how the dog ingested the THC or if it was a deliberate action by someone.

“I don’t know if somebody was sending a mean message,” she said. “I don’t want to accuse anyone.”

Seaman said she and the puppy spent several hours this week inside VCA Hualapai Animal Hospital, and she shared a toxicology report on Blu that showed THC.

“I don’t know how he ingested it,” Seaman said. “It was very heartbreaking to watch him go what he went through.”

Contact Dalton LaFerney at dlaferney@reviewjournal.com or at 702-383-0288. Follow @daltonlaferney on Twitter.