Bella's story, ten years on - what we learned about cannabinoids in dogs
- Bella’s case was an observational experience, not a controlled trial
- THC and CBD produced very different clinical presentations
- Dogs are highly sensitive to THC intoxication and CBD is a safe
- Product composition and CoAs are critical
- The article discusses the evolution of cannabinoid understanding in Australian veterinary practice and the educational gap on the Endocannabinoid System (ECS)
Ten years ago this month, we started treating our six-year-old American Staffordshire Terrier, Bella, for what we thought was one of the common skin issues this breed is well known for. Following a biopsy, her vet told us it was something far worse: a rare and aggressive skin cancer that was going to take her from us.
Cutaneous epitheliotropic T-cell lymphoma (CETL) - malignant T-lymphocytes infiltrate the upper layers of the skin, progressing from initial redness and scaling to painful ulcers and plaques.
Prognosis: CETL is a progressive disease and the goal is usually to maintain comfort for as long as possible rather than a permanent cure. At the time, conventional options were sparse, with both chemotherapy and radiation proving largely ineffective against this form of lymphoma. Consequently, the only remaining options were symptom management or euthanasia to prevent unmanageable suffering.
Bella before her illness - happy, healthy, and entirely herself.
What followed in the nineteen months between that diagnosis and the day Bella left us did two things that have inspired us to create HEMPPET®.
First, it led us to investigate cannabinoids and the Endocannabinoid System. Until 2016, neither of us had any reason to know that mammals carry a regulatory system specifically tuned to cannabinoid molecules - endogenous endo-cannabinoids we make ourselves, and plant-derived phyto-cannabinoids the cannabis genus has spent its evolutionary history producing. We learned about it because Bella's case - her diagnosis, her clinical course, the contrast between the two oils she was given over those nineteen months - taught us this regulatory system was real, present, and clinically relevant in ways neither of us had ever had reason to consider.
Second, it taught us that THC and CBD are not interchangeable in dogs. Two oils, nineteen months, two completely different clinical pictures. We didn't have the language for it at the time. Ten years on, we do.
This is written for Australian veterinary professionals.
The Endocannabinoid System (ECS) is the regulatory network of receptors (CB1, CB2 and others), endogenous ligands (anandamide, 2-AG), and the enzymes that synthesise and degrade them. This system is present in every patient you see, modulating pain, sleep, immunity, appetite, anxiety, and homeostasis. ECS coverage in veterinary education has been very limited internationally, and to our knowledge there is no published survey specifically of Australian veterinary curricula. Surveys in human medical education have documented limited cannabis and ECS curriculum coverage, and the veterinary picture, by everything we hear from the vets we speak with, looks similar.
That gap is precisely why I run Lunch & Learn (L&L) webinar sessions for vets every weekday - education for veterinary professionals, run to address what we believe is a genuine knowledge gap. We are transparent about that commercial context. The sessions cover the ECS and its therapeutic implications, and they are free.
If you are a vet reading this and you want to discover what the ECS is all about, you can book a free L&L session at HempPet.au/pages/l-l.
This is the post I wish I'd been able to read in May 2016.
We wanted to do this the right way
Bella's vet, Dr Baron did his homework. In the days following Bella's diagnosis, he pulled together a treatment plan that drew on what the peer-reviewed literature could offer for a disease as difficult as CETL.
The first was linoleic acid. A small but real peer-reviewed literature documents oral high-dose linoleic acid - typically delivered as safflower oil - as an adjunctive treatment for the form of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma Bella had. Iwamoto et al. (1992, Cancer Letters) documented remission in six of eight dogs.1 The protocol is referenced in the standard veterinary oncology reviews at approximately 3 ml/kg orally.2 For Bella, at 40 kg, that worked out to 240 ml of oil a day. Roughly half a cup, morning and night. To Dr Baron, it was the evidence-based front line of what could be offered.
We delivered it via large (horse) syringe - 120 ml twice a day. Bella was extraordinarily brave about it. We ran one ten-day course, paused for ten days, then ran a second ten-day course. After that we stopped. The volume was, candidly, dramatic to administer, and by the time we completed the second course Bella had started the cannabis oil and we elected not to repeat the protocol again.
The second was cannabinoids. By 2016, the international literature suggested cannabinoids might play an adjunct role in some lymphomas. Dr Baron and I discussed it. We agreed the evidence was preliminary, but given Bella's prognosis and the limited utility of conventional options, it was worth investigating through whatever channels were available at the time.
On cannabis and what Bella's vet told me, and what he didn't direct. I want to be precise about this part of the story, because it matters. Dr Baron and I had spoken about cannabis early on. The frame in 2016 was simply "cannabis" - the THC/CBD distinction was not part of everyday Australian veterinary vocabulary, and the canine pharmacology literature we have today did not yet exist.
What Baron did tell me, clearly, was that dogs have a hypersensitivity to cannabis and that the canine response to cannabis preparations was known to be more pronounced than in other mammals, and that this was a serious consideration before anything was given.
Dr Baron did not prescribe cannabis. He did not direct its administration. Australia in 2016 had no cannabis-containing veterinary chemical product registered by the APVMA. 10 years later - it still doesn't.3 They do administer a very complex minor use permit scheme, with a companion consent-to-import pathway. We approached them. We got nowhere. Compounding wasn't an option either; medicinal cannabis was still some months from being legalised for human use in Australia - one of the last Western countries to establish a legal pathway to access cannabis for treatment options. We looked at every option we could find. Cannabinoids were a candidate. Sourcing was the barrier.
What happened next did not come from a clinical decision. It came from a friendship - and from a moment in Australian history when cannabis preparations passed informally between cancer patients and their families because no other route existed.
In May 2016, Sandra's best friend was in the final stages of breast cancer. Her husband was caring for her at home. He had tried everything a husband can try when he is watching his wife die - and somewhere along the way, he had sourced a bottle of cannabis oil. Many Australian families in that period did the same; informal sharing of cannabis preparations between families affected by cancer was widespread before legalisation. Sandra and I had been spending much of that period supporting their family. Then Bella's diagnosis landed on top of everything else. One evening, in early May 2016, a week after we received the news about Bella, I was given a bottle of oil and heard the words that would impact the rest of our lives:
"Why don't you try this with your dog?"
The decision to give Bella the oil from that first bottle was mine alone. I want to be clear about this. Baron had told me about canine hypersensitivity to cannabis. He had not directed treatment with it. Once Bella was on the oil, Dr Baron monitored her clinical course alongside the linoleic acid protocol, as her treating vet - but the choice to administer the oil from that first bottle was made by me, weighing what I had been told about hypersensitivity against Bella's prognosis and the absence of any other realistic option.
Our friend lost her battle a month later. Bella lived another nineteen months.
On the regulatory framing
We did not bypass the regulatory system. I tried every lawful channel available to source cannabinoid containing preparation. None had an answer for us in Bella's timeframe.
To understand why - and why this matters for the product HEMPPET® makes today - it is worth being precise about what the Australian regulatory environment actually contained in 2016, and what it contains now. Australia operates two parallel regulatory frameworks for cannabinoid-containing products. The first is medicinal cannabis under the Narcotic Drugs Act 1967 - high-THC material, licensed and controlled by the Office of Drug Control (ODC), restricted to human therapeutic use. The second is industrial hemp under state and territory legislation (in NSW, the Hemp Industry Act 2008) - low-THC material (typically less than 1% THC at harvest), cultivated under state licensing, and not subject to ODC jurisdiction. The two pathways have been distinct since well before Bella's diagnosis. They are governed by different legislation, different licensing authorities, and different permitted-use rules.
The bottle I received in May 2016 fell into neither pathway cleanly. It was not ODC-licensed medicinal cannabis (which had no veterinary route in any case). And it was not a product made under any specific Australian regulatory framework for industrial-hemp-derived cannabinoid preparations intended for veterinary use - because no such dedicated framework existed then, and no dedicated framework exists today. What HEMPPET® has done over the years since is build that framework for itself: a self-regulatory standard for industrial-hemp-derived veterinary nutritional supplements that the legislation has not yet defined.
What the legislation did give Australian vets, and what Dr Baron used in his ongoing monitoring of Bella, was the off-label prescribing pathway. Under Queensland's Veterinary Surgeons Act 1936, the Chemical Usage (Agricultural and Veterinary) Control Act 1988, and the then-current health regulations governing scheduled poisons,13registered veterinarians have long held the authority to exercise professional judgement in the off-label use of treatments for animals under their care. The framework was set out in the AVA's then-current Guidelines for Prescribing, Authorising and Dispensing Veterinary Medicines, published in October 2013 and in active use throughout 2016.14 Off-label prescribing was - and is - an established, codified part of how veterinary practice in Australia functions.
Dr Baron's role through Bella's nineteen months sat squarely within his clinical responsibilities: he had warned me about canine hypersensitivity to cannabis before I made my decision; once that decision was made, he monitored Bella's response, documented her clinical course, and exercised judgement on the rest of the treatment plan within the regulatory framework as it then stood. The first bottle of oil contained cannabis of an unknown cannabinoid concentration - there was no laboratory in Australia at the time that could establish what was in it. The legal pathway for what could be done by a vet was clear; the product itself was the variable. And it is precisely that variable - the missing composition transparency - that HEMP DROPS was eventually created to address.
HEMP DROPS sits in a regulatory position that is genuinely unusual in the Australian market. It is not a registered veterinary chemical product (VCP) - HEMPPET® makes no therapeutic claims for it, and under the APVMA's current published position, suppliers determine VCP status based on their own attributes, properties and claims. It is not a freely-sold pet food or wellness supplement either - it contains Cannabidiol (CBD), which is a Schedule 4 (prescription only) substance under the Poisons Standard, and supply is restricted to licensed Australian veterinarians and pharmacies... and it is not an ODC-controlled medicinal cannabis product - it is manufactured from state-regulated industrial hemp under the NSW Hemp Industry Act 2008, in a licensed GMP facility, to a composition specification that totals approximately 2% of full-spectrum hemp concentrate by weight suspended in a hemp seed oil blend. The result is what we describe as a category for itself: an industrial-hemp-derived beneficial feed supplement, supplied through licensed veterinarians under the off-label prescribing pathway, with batch-level Certificates of Analysis from a NATA-accredited Australian laboratory. The regulatory architecture didn't exist in 2016. We had to build it - and we continue to self-regulate to a standard the legislation has, in places, only recently caught up with.
Bella’s case taught us that composition matters, THC and CBD are not interchangeable in dogs, and no owner should have to administer an unverifiable preparation in the dark.
This account is offered as general educational discussion of the Australian veterinary regulatory framework, not as legal advice. Vets considering off-label prescribing decisions should refer to their state veterinary board's current published policies and their own professional indemnity advisors. HEMPPET®'s full Regulatory Status Analysis (February 2026) is available to vets through the HEMPPET® vet portal.
What happened next - and what we now recognise
Within three weeks, Bella's condition began to change. The tumours on her thorax and nose stopped progressing. The nose lesion reduced. She ate, she ran, she was herself. There were still visible scars on her skin, nose, and ears, and by November 2016, six months after initiating the cannabis oil, she was behaving like a healthy dog. We applied the oil topically to weeping lesions and gave a few drops orally each day. We continued in this pattern through the latter half of 2016 and the early months of 2017. By January 2017, the tumours were no longer weeping and no new ones had appeared, so topical application had become almost rare. The oil ran out in April 2017.
I want to be precise about what we can and cannot attribute. The temporal pattern aligned with topical and oral cannabis oil administration: the linoleic acid protocol ran for two ten-day courses early in the treatment period and then stopped, while the cannabis oil was the variable that continued from May 2016 through April 2017. The drying of the weeping lesions, and the healing of Bella's nose, occurred during the period in which the cannabis oil was the continuing intervention. That is the basis on which we attributed the response to the oil at the time - though we now recognise that spontaneous variation in CETL's natural course can produce comparable observations, that delayed effects of the linoleic acid protocol cannot be ruled out, that individual clinical responses should never be generalised, and that this remains a clinical observation, not a controlled trial.
Treatment phase, late 2016 to mid-2017. Left: the nasal lesions Bella had topical oil applied to. Right: skin patches on her flank where lesions had presented. The drying and reduction of the nasal lesions occurred during the period the cannabis oil was the continuing intervention.
Those months were also marked by signs we did not have the vocabulary for at the time. When I was using with the first oil, Bella was periodically ataxic. She had episodes of urinary dribbling. She became hyperaesthetic. Her pupils would dilate.
At the time, I did not connect these signs to what Dr Baron had warned me about before I gave Bella that first bottle. His warning had been framed around canine hypersensitivity to cannabis — that was the language of 2016, before the THC/CBD distinction had entered everyday Australian veterinary vocabulary, and well before the quantitative canine pharmacology literature we have today existed. I knew dogs responded more strongly to cannabis than other mammals. I did not yet know why, or which molecule was responsible, or what the signs of that response would look like in practice. When Bella showed those signs, I registered them as part of an experimental palliative regimen for a dog with a terminal diagnosis - not as a recognisable toxidrome with a specific molecular cause.
With ten years of retrospect and a much-matured veterinary literature, we now recognise these as canine THC intoxication signs. The oil contained delta-9-THC at unknown concentration, with no batch testing and no way to titrate. Baron's original warning about hypersensitivity was correct and at that time we simply did not yet have the framework to understand what the hypersensitivity was to, or to read Bella's signs for what they were.
The canine cerebellum and brainstem are densely populated with CB1 receptors, which is why dogs experience cannabinoid intoxication signs (ataxia, urinary incontinence, hyperaesthesia) more readily than other mammals. Educational diagram, intended as visual reference only.
On the clinical context for those signs: Bella was on palliative care for a progressive cancer with no effective conventional alternative. The realistic comparator for those signs was not a healthy untreated dog - it was euthanasia or unmanaged disease progression. She was medicated, not suffering, and her vet monitored her health throughout. But I want to be honest about what we were observing and what we did not yet understand. The signs were real. The potential cause - THC at an unknown concentration in an unverifiable preparation - was not something could be confirmed at the time. No Australian laboratory could have told us what was in that bottle.
I include this account in full because the honest legacy of Bella's case is that we now know what we were looking at... and HEMP DROPS exists in part to ensure no other pet owner is administering an unverifiable preparation in the dark. Dogs experience THC intoxication far more readily than other mammals. Baron knew that in 2016, in the language available then. The peer-reviewed literature has since confirmed it in precise molecular and clinical detail. That knowledge gap - between what a vet could warn about in 2016 and what the literature can now characterise - is exactly the gap this story sits inside.
We were, candidly, fortunate with the bottle we were given. If we had known then what we know now... about composition, about THC's specific effects in dogs, about everything... the story might have looked very different. We do not, at any point, claim that cannabis cured Bella's cancer. We claim only that her clinical course over those nineteen months... and the contrast with what came after... is what taught us the questions that built HEMPPET®.
What happened when we found CBD
In April 2017, the original oil ran out. It took us five months to source a replacement. By September 2017, we'd found a locally produced CBD-predominant oil.
What we observed is the most important clinical data point in Bella's whole story:
No effect on the tumours. They had returned during the five-month treatment gap, and the new (CBD) oil did not arrest them the way the original oil had.
But Bella was noticeably more comfortable. Less pain behaviour, more settled, no ataxia, no urinary incontinence, no hyperaesthesia. Where the contrast with the first oil's period had been characterised by visible lesion changes coinciding with (what we now know) are canine THC intoxication signs, the period on the CBD-predominant oil was characterised by behavioural settling without those intoxication signs - but no observable change in the tumours themselves. Two oils, two different observational profiles. Neither was a controlled trial. Both, in their own way, taught us something we did not previously know.
This is the moment HEMPPET® began, intellectually. The contrast between those two oils - same plant family, radically different clinical pictures - forced me to ask the question almost no Australian vet in 2017 could answer: what is actually in this bottle, and what is the functional difference between THC and CBD in dogs?
The answer to the first question was "nobody knows without a laboratory." The answer to the second has been transformed by peer-reviewed literature since.
What we now know - ten years of literature
The clinical evidence on canine cannabinoid biology has matured substantially since 2016. Three findings stand out for any vet reading this.
The ECS is universal across mammals, but its architecture is species-specific - receptor density and distribution differ enough that safety thresholds established in one species cannot be safely extrapolated to another. Educational diagram, intended as visual reference only
The canine ECS is real, mapped, and clinically relevant. Freundt-Revilla and colleagues (2017) mapped CB1 receptor distribution across the canine central and peripheral nervous system, documenting expression across cerebral cortex, hippocampus, cerebellum, medulla, and spinal cord.4 The popular "10 times more CB1 than humans" claim does not appear in the primary literature and should be treated as a hypothesis at best. What the paper does establish is that the canine ECS is architecturally primed in motor-coordination and autonomic regions, which is why dogs respond to cannabinoids the way they do.
THC intoxication is now well-characterised in Australian veterinary practice. Lauinger and Peacock's 2022 paper in the Australian Veterinary Journal documented fifteen Melbourne cases - ataxia (13/15), mydriasis (6/15), hyperaesthesia (5/15), urinary incontinence (4/15), stupor (3/15).5The signs Bella showed in 2016 are the signs that turn up in Melbourne casualty today. The largest modern series - Binagia et al., JAVMA 2024, 223 cases - reinforces the pattern with ataxia in 88.3% of cases.6
CBD has a different short-term safety profile, with caveats. Gamble et al. (2018),7 Vaughn et al. (2020),8 and McGrath et al. (2019)9 have collectively established that CBD-predominant formulations are reasonably tolerated in dogs at standard doses over the short term, with the recurring tolerability signal being mild alkaline phosphatase elevations rather than CNS or behavioural effects. Bella's clinical course on the CBD oil in late 2017 was a preview of that safety profile.
Two specific clinical considerations are worth flagging for any vet considering CBD in animal wellness contexts. First, the dose-dependent elevations in alkaline phosphatase (ALP) observed across multiple canine studies suggest a hepatic adaptation or burden whose long-term clinical significance is still being characterised. Baseline liver enzyme screening prior to extended administration, and periodic monitoring during use, are reasonable precautions. Second, CBD acts as an inhibitor of cytochrome P450 enzymes - the human literature has documented inhibition of CYP1A2, CYP2C19 and CYP3A4 in particular; the canine-specific data is more limited, but the mechanism is conserved across mammals and creates a real potential for drug-drug interactions in patients on concurrent therapy. Anticonvulsants, NSAIDs, certain anaesthetic agents and corticosteroids are the most clinically relevant classes to consider. CBD is not "natural therefore safe" - it is a pharmacologically active molecule that warrants the same prescriber attention any Schedule 4 substance receives. This is the conversation we have most often in our weekday Lunch & Learn sessions.
And the product-quality problem is severe. Bonn-Miller et al. (JAMA 2017) found only 30% of online CBD products tested within ±10% of label CBD content.10 Wakshlag et al. (2020) - analysing 29 over-the-counter veterinary hemp supplements - found only 10 of 29 within 10% of label, four with heavy-metal contamination, and two with no detectable cannabinoids.11 The TGA has separately warned that medicinal cannabis sourced outside the regulated supply chain may not be accurately labelled.12
The first oil we gave Bella in 2016 would almost certainly have been among those products. That is why batch-level testing matters, and why HEMPPET® built its product around it.
What Bella taught us
Three lessons, plainly stated:
Veterinary cannabinoid products cannot be responsibly used without batch-level traceability. A current Certificate of Analysis is the difference between an informed wellness decision and a guess.
The canine ECS responds very differently to the two molecules. Bella showed us the difference in 2016 and 2017. The literature has confirmed it in the years since.
What we observed in Bella's final months: a CBD-predominant oil that supported comfort and quality of life. This is what led HEMPPET® to focus on composition, batch testing, veterinary oversight, and the responsible discussion of hemp-derived CBD as a wellness consideration. HEMP DROPS launched in December 2019 carrying that focus forward.
HEMPPET® does not make cancer-curing claims, and HEMP DROPS is not a cancer treatment. The story above is exactly that - a story, set ten years ago, of how Bella's illness led us to investigate cannabinoids and the ECS. Since launching HEMP DROPS in December 2019, what we have seen first-hand and what the published literature supports is full-spectrum CBD's role in everyday animal wellness - supporting comfort, mobility, appetite and settled behaviour in dogs, cats and horses. That is what HEMP DROPS is for, and what it is not.
Two anniversaries this month
Bella's story happened inside a specific moment in Australian regulatory history. In May 2016, when we started Bella on treatment, medicinal cannabis was about six months from becoming operationally available for human use under the new Commonwealth scheme - and the regulatory pathway for industrial-hemp-derived cannabinoid products in animals was effectively unmapped. Compounding wasn't an option, importation pathways closed in our face, and the only product available to us came informally. The peer-reviewed canine CBD safety and efficacy literature was all still to come.
This month, alongside the ten years since we began treating Bella, marks another anniversary worth noting. On 1 May 2025, the APVMA quietly revised its public guidance on cannabis in veterinary chemical products. The revision did two things. First, it explicitly recognised the Excluded Nutritional or Digestive (END) pathway under Part 3 of Schedule 3AA of the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Code Regulations 1995, clarifying how non-therapeutic hemp and hemp-derived nutritional products sit relative to VCP registration requirements. Second, it removed a statement, in place since August 2023, that had been widely read as prohibiting Australian-manufactured hemp-derived CBD from being prescribed for animals. That statement had conflated two distinct frameworks - the ODC's restriction on domestically-cultivated medicinal cannabis (which restricts medicinal cannabis to human therapeutic use) and the unrelated state-regulated industrial hemp pathway (which has always been available for veterinary off-label use, subject to Schedule 4 prescribing rules). Its removal was not a press release. There was no media statement. It was a silent content revision - but for industrial-hemp-derived products distributed to vets, it removed the only piece of public APVMA guidance that could reasonably have been misread as prohibiting them.
For HEMPPET®, the May 2025 revision matters because it confirmed in writing what HEMP DROPS' regulatory positioning had been built on since the December 2019 launch - that an industrial-hemp-derived nutritional supplement, made in Australia under state-licensed industrial hemp legislation and supplied through licensed veterinarians under Schedule 4 prescribing authority, is a coherent and lawful product category. We acknowledge that for the years between August 2023 and May 2025, many Australian vets reasonably believed they were more constrained than they actually were. That ambiguity is gone now.
In 2026, the broader landscape is almost unrecognisable from where we started. Medicinal cannabis is a standard therapeutic option for humans across the developed world. Full-spectrum cannabinoid preparations are now the subject of peer-reviewed research for diverse animal wellness applications: mobility, anxiety, sleep, appetite, settled behaviour. None of this was true when we lost Bella.
What has not changed - and this is the part I think about most - is how little of the underlying ECS science has reached the training of the medical professionals caring for our pets, our families, and ourselves. That gap is what HEMPPET® is still working on.
A note on HEMPPET® and where ten years of expertise have led
A guided tour of the ECS - the regulatory system every mammalian patient carries. The Australian veterinary L&L sessions runs every weekday work through this material in clinical depth. Educational overview, intended as visual reference only.
HEMP DROPS launched in December 2019 - the product Sandra and I with a small team of vets, biochemists and nutrition specialists, designed in deliberate contrast to everything we learned with Bella in 2016 and 2017. Composition is the difference. Where the bottle I received in 2016 was an unverifiable preparation of unknown concentration, HEMP DROPS is built around the proposition that vets and pet owners must be able to establish exactly what is in the bottle.
The product specification: Australian hemp seed oil, MCT carrier oil, and hemp concentrate (CBD-dominant full-spectrum profile), with vitamin E as a natural antioxidant. THC is non-detectable. Total cannabinoids below the threshold that applies in jurisdictions with published cannabinoid limits (currently Queensland and Western Australia). The hemp is sourced from Australian-grown industrial hemp cultivated under state-regulated industrial hemp legislation (in our case, the NSW Hemp Industry Act 2008). Manufacturing is performed within a licensed Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) facility in NSW - with all QA processes in place. Every batch is independently tested by ACS Laboratories - an Australian NATA-accredited testing facility (ISO/IEC 17025) - and every HEMP DROPS bottle ships to the vet clinic with details of the relevant batch's current Certificate of Analysis.
That specification, and the supply chain that produces it, did not exist in 2016. Building it - and the regulatory positioning that makes it lawful, sustainable and verifiable - is what HEMP PET has spent the years since Bella's death doing. The brand's purpose is straightforward: healthier pets and happier pet parents, supported by composition transparency rather than by therapeutic claim.
The conversations we have most often with veterinarians are quality-of-life conversations: how to evaluate product composition, how to interpret a Certificate of Analysis, how to discuss cannabinoid options clearly with clients, and how to make careful case-by-case decisions about wellness support within the off-label prescribing framework. The everyday questions vets bring to us - about senior dogs, about anxious dogs, about dogs, cats and horses during recovery - are not different from the everyday questions any clinician fields. They are case-specific. The framework is the same.
Dr Baron has continued that work with us as our Veterinary Advisor. His twenty-year clinical relationship with our family, and his role as Bella's treating vet, are the reason we are confident in having discussions about cannabinoid treatments with other vets.
Vets who want to deepen their grasp of the ECS - and the differences between dogs, cats and horses, the off-label prescribing framework as it applies to industrial-hemp-derived products, the dual regulatory framework (industrial hemp vs. ODC-controlled medicinal cannabis), and the clinical considerations for full-spectrum CBD in animal wellness - can book a free L&L session at HempPet.au/pages/l-l.
Sessions are educational, founder-led, and run every weekday. Vets who want to review HEMP DROPS' specification, current batch CoAs, the products full Regulatory Status Analysis, or off-label prescribing considerations for a specific patient, can register at the vet portal at HempPet.au.
Whilst Bella's illness first led us to investigate cannabinoids, HEMP PET products do not treat, cure, prevent or modify cancer or any other disease. Cutaneous epitheliotropic T-cell lymphoma is a progressive disease with a guarded-to-poor prognosis in dogs. HEMP DROPS is a hemp-derived nutritional supplement positioned for everyday animal wellness - not as a cancer treatment, not as a substitute for veterinary oncology care. Any clinical decisions about cannabinoid or other adjuncts in animals with serious illness should be made in consultation with a registered veterinarian who knows the animal.
Bella in her favourite place - park with other pupsArthur Wajs 7 May 2026
In memory of Bella - our 40-kilogram American Staffordshire Terrier, who passed away on 23 November 2017, after nineteen extraordinary months we never expected to have.
In memory also of Sandra's best friend, who lost her own battle with breast cancer in mid-2016, a month after the conversation that put a bottle of cannabis oil in Arthur's hand. HEMP PET was created from that journey.
With enduring thanks to Dr Baron Jonsson - our friend of more than twenty years, the Wajs family vet, and now HEMP PET's Veterinary Advisor - who walked this path with our family and whose clinical instincts shaped everything that came after.
- Arthur and Sandra Wajs, HEMP PET co-founders
References
- Iwamoto KS et al. Linoleate produces remission in canine mycosis fungoides. Cancer Lett. 1992;64(1):17–22. PMID: 1596872.
- De Lorimier LP. Updates on the management of canine epitheliotropic cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Vet Clin N Am Small Anim Pract. 2006;36(1):213–228. Fontaine J et al. Canine cutaneous epitheliotropic T-cell lymphoma: a review. Vet Comp Oncol. 2009;7(1):1–14.
- APVMA, Cannabis in veterinary chemical products (current guidance). apvma.gov.au
- Freundt-Revilla J et al. Spatial distribution of cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1) in normal canine central and peripheral nervous system. PLOS ONE. 2017;12(7):e0181064.
- Lauinger CA, Peacock R. Marijuana toxicosis in dogs in Melbourne, Australia. Aust Vet J. 2022;100(3):90–97.
- Binagia BW et al. Clinical examination findings and electrolyte abnormalities of dogs with marijuana/THC toxicity: 223 cases. JAVMA. 2024;262(8). DOI: 10.2460/javma.24.02.0092.
- Gamble LJ et al. Pharmacokinetics, safety, and clinical efficacy of cannabidiol treatment in osteoarthritic dogs. Front Vet Sci. 2018;5:165.
- Vaughn D, Kulpa J, Paulionis L. Preliminary investigation of the safety of escalating cannabinoid doses in healthy dogs.Front Vet Sci. 2020;7:51.
- McGrath S et al. Randomized blinded controlled clinical trial to assess the effect of oral cannabidiol administration in addition to conventional antiepileptic treatment on seizure frequency in dogs. JAVMA. 2019;254(11):1301–1308.
- Bonn-Miller MO et al. Labeling accuracy of cannabidiol extracts sold online. JAMA. 2017;318(17):1708–1709.
- Wakshlag JJ et al. Cannabinoid, terpene, and heavy metal analysis of 29 over-the-counter commercial veterinary hemp supplements. Vet Med (Auckl). 2020;11:45–55.
- TGA, TGA warns consumers about potential harm from unlawfully supplied medicinal cannabis. tga.gov.au
- Queensland Veterinary Surgeons Act 1936 (in force throughout 2016, current as at 1 July 2016); Chemical Usage (Agricultural and Veterinary) Control Act 1988 (Qld); Health (Drugs and Poisons) Regulation 1996 (Qld) — the regulation in force in 2016, since replaced by the Medicines and Poisons Act 2019 (Qld) and Medicines and Poisons (Medicines) Regulation 2021 (Qld). Veterinary Surgeons Board of Queensland, vsb.qld.gov.au/for-vets/legislation.
- Australian Veterinary Association. Guidelines for Prescribing, Authorising and Dispensing Veterinary Medicines.October 2013 edition (in force during 2016); current edition October 2023. ava.com.au/library-journals-and-resources/ava-other-resources/prescribing-guidelines/