DOG INGESTS MIX OF DRUGS DURING WALK AT CRISSY FIELD BEACH IN SAN FRANCISCO:

It was a regular walk at the park that almost ended in tragedy for three-year-old Lido.

“His temperature peaked to 108 degrees. He was shaking and drooling and was out of control and we were concerned that he was going to have a heart attack or that we were going to lose him,” described Lido’s guardian Jennifer McHugh.

McHugh says Lido began to spin minutes after ingesting a substance during their morning walk at Crissy Field Beach.

“Clearly the drug use in San Francisco has hit epidemic levels if we are concerned about walking our dogs and them interacting or coming in contact with drug paraphernalia,” said McHugh.

The drugs found inside Lido’s system were methamphetamine and oxycodone.

The use of the phrase pet “guardian” in the article is an appropriately Orwellian Bay Area touch. I’m only surprised that the ABC affiliate didn’t refer to Lido as being one of the area’s “fur children.”

UPDATE: Bay Area blogger Bookworm emailed me:

Re the story about the poor dog that almost died on the streets of SF, the “guardian” language comes right out of the San Francisco Municipal Code:

The Code now refers to guardian or owner, but I have a vague memory that the word “owner” was fiercely contested at one time.
Well, that jibes with the 2004 Slate article on the G-word I linked to above.