Curious Gal Asks Online Community If Regular Pet Dogs Can Detect Drugs Like Police Dogs Do
Some people swear their pets can “tell” when something is off. In this thread, a woman claims her dogs picked up on cues so reliably that they acted like they knew exactly when trouble was coming, even down to what she reached for and who was in the room.
It gets complicated fast because she’s not talking about a cute trick. She describes changing behavior during her meth use, hiding in shame, and watching her dogs go from excited walkers to anxious closet-hiders when guests arrived. Her guilt comes through hard, especially when she says she stripped one dog of more time and energy than she should have, all while trying to keep her habit out of sight.
And then the replies turn into a chorus: dogs that stare like they’re scared, cats that raid purses, and everyone trying to make sense of why animals react so intensely to the same moments.
See a drug user's advice at the end.
In my opinion, they don’t know what it is or what it does, but they notice cues.
Both my dogs passed away this past year; only two years ago, I started my meth use. When I say dogs pick up on cues, I mean whenever I put my shoes on, they get excited because they think they’re going for a walk; at least, that’s how mine did.
They knew that nine times out of ten, when I put my shoes on and they hadn't been out in a little while, they figured they were about to go for a walk. I think my dogs may have noticed a change in my behavior when I grabbed a certain device or when someone would come over.
It got to the point that my last one would go into my closet and hide whenever I had someone over. I hate myself for it; they were older, but I felt the girl had more life in her, and I stripped her of that.
If I weren’t a coward, I would go visit them, or at least hope that’s what would happen. You’d think I would quit, but why?
So I can gain clarity and fine-tune that reality. Don’t let your dogs be around it at any time.
If there is a specific room where you do it, never let them in that room. Never.
Pet dogs can detect drugs. They can also sense their owner is stoned.
Oh my God, my dog will do the same. She literally looks at me like she’s scared or like she can tell something is wrong with me.
It makes me so f*cking full of guilt that I hide too. Sometimes she won’t even come near me, even if I’m being loving :( It’s so crazy how they have that sense.
A cat would even go as far as to snatch it from purses.
I don't have a dog, but my cats absolutely know, and my friend has a cat that will literally get into your purse and pull it out. One of mine was in serious pain waiting for surgery (he is perfect now) and would follow its passing from person to person; we assumed trying to get a contact buzz.
I would never advocate getting an animal high on narcotics, so no one ever purposely shared, but I think it helped ease the pain, so we also never shut him out. Now that he is healthy again, he doesn't act the way he did.
Animals are smart in ways we are not.
A user believes that dogs can sense the guilt.
Yep. But I think it's more about us projecting our guilt onto them.
It seems likely that this has a lot to do with it. Our dogs can't really know what it is we're doing exactly, but if you have a close relationship with your pupper (which it sounds like you do), they'll be so tuned in to us that they pick up on any slight changes in our moods, i.e., our own guilt.
This doggo isn't a fan of the smell.
My dog would hide under the bed when he’d see me start prepping my workstation, only coming out if I lay on the bed.
Dogs are smarter than most people give them credit for.
Others would do it in the bathroom just so they won't see their dog's reaction.
I hope other people answer this because I'm curious to see what they say. My dogs do the same thing, and I do the same thing: go to the bathroom and shut the door because I feel so guilty. LOL
When she says her last dog ran straight into the closet whenever someone came over, the whole “do they detect drugs?” question stops being theoretical and starts sounding personal.
This reminds me of Digger, the rescues rehabilitated from owners who conditioned him to drink for their amusement, and how he turned it around.
The thread ties her shoe routine to the same pattern, like her dogs learned the difference between “walk time” and “something’s wrong” before she ever admitted it.
After she explains she grabbed a certain device and her animals reacted, the comments shift from curiosity to shock, because multiple people describe eerily similar behavior.
Then someone adds that their cat will rip drugs out of a purse, and suddenly the story is less about police-dog fantasies and more about how animals track human chaos.
Naturally, you cannot expect the pet dog to have the same reaction as police dogs because the latter are trained to react in a certain manner.
You can see a pattern based on people's responses, though. Firstly, they can indeed smell and detect drugs.
Secondly, they can detect that something's wrong with their drug-using owner.
Nobody wants to watch a pet flinch at their own life, but this one keeps happening in the background.
Wait until you see the “guilty face” the dog had when caught in the act, and what it really meant.
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