CBD for Dogs and Cats: What NC Pet Owners Should Know

There is no approved CBD dose for dogs or cats, because there is no approved CBD product for animals at all. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration states plainly that it "has not approved cannabis for any use in animals." What does exist is a small body of veterinary research that tested specific amounts, mostly around 2 milligrams per kilogram of body weight given twice a day, in small groups of dogs and a handful of cats. That research is worth knowing, and it is also much thinner than the pet aisle suggests.

This guide is for North Carolina pet owners who have seen CBD treats, chews and oils on a Triangle hemp-shop counter or a website and want an honest picture before they ask their veterinarian about it. It is educational, not veterinary advice. Nothing here is a dose to give your animal. The numbers below are what researchers used in controlled studies, reported so you can follow a conversation with your vet, not replace one.

Raleigh Dispensaries is a directory of 81 hemp retailers in the Triangle, and 45 of them list CBD among their products. We do not sell anything, including pet products, and nothing below recommends a brand.

Update, October 10, 2026: The federal deadline discussed on this page has moved, and the move is now law. H.R. 6500 became Public Law 119-103 on September 2, 2026. Its Section 2019 keeps only the narrowest piece of the new hemp definition on November 12, 2026, covering cannabinoids the plant cannot naturally make, and delays the rest to December 11, 2026, including the 0.4mg total THC per container cap that reaches most finished products (Section 2019, enrolled text). For nearly everything sold at a Triangle hemp shop, delta-8 included, December 11, 2026 is the date that matters. Nothing has changed it since September, but it falls on the same day federal funding runs out, so watch the next funding bill. See our NC hemp bill tracker for current status, and our December 11 report for how many Triangle shops sell what it reaches.

The Short Answer: What the Research Shows and What It Does Not

The research on CBD in pets is real but early. A few randomized, placebo-controlled trials exist in dogs, fewer in cats, and nearly all of them are small, short, and tied to a specific product. Several found measurable changes. None is large enough to settle whether CBD works for a given condition in a given animal, and the authors of these studies say so themselves.

The table below summarizes ten studies covering arthritis, seizures, calming, and safety. The last column comes from each paper's conflict-of-interest statement, funding statement or author affiliations, plus one university release, because who paid for a study is part of reading it. At least nine of the ten were funded by, or had authors employed by or consulting for, a company that sells cannabinoid or pet products. We could not confirm the funding for the tenth. That does not make the results wrong. It does mean independent replication is still mostly missing.

Sources: each linked study, its PubMed abstract and its disclosure statement; McGrath 2019 funding from Colorado State University's May 23, 2019 release. Daily amounts are as stated by each study.

The pattern matters more than any one row. Where CBD looked useful, it was usually on owner-scored pain in arthritic dogs. Where it was tested for calming, it mostly did not separate from placebo. And most of the studies that tracked bloodwork over weeks found a liver-enzyme signal worth a veterinarian's attention.

CBD Dosage for Dogs: What the Studies Actually Used

"How much CBD should I give my dog?" The honest answer is that no regulator, veterinary body or study has established that. What the literature does give is a set of protocols, expressed in milligrams of CBD per kilogram of the animal's body weight. Those protocols are the closest thing to a reference point, and they are useful mainly for understanding a product label and asking your veterinarian a precise question.

The common protocol is 2 mg/kg every 12 hours, which is 4 mg/kg per day. The Cornell osteoarthritis trial used it, and so did the 12-week dog and cat safety study. The Colorado State epilepsy trial used slightly more, 2.5 mg/kg twice daily. The Kentucky fireworks study used a fixed 25 mg treat that worked out to about 1.4 mg/kg per day, and found no calming effect. A Waltham cat study used 4 mg/kg once daily for 26 weeks.

Two things matter when reading those numbers. First, the studies state amounts per kilogram of body weight and per dose, so a "twice daily" protocol and a daily total are different figures. Second, the studies used specific formulations, often oils with known absorption, and the Cornell team measured blood levels to confirm the CBD actually got in. A chew or treat from a different maker may deliver a very different amount to the bloodstream.

That last point is not theoretical. In the dog and cat safety study, the same 2 mg/kg dose produced an average peak blood concentration of 301 ng/mL in dogs and only 43 ng/mL in cats. A 2025 Waltham study of CBD treats reported that "CBD plasma levels were highly variable between individual dogs." The milligram number on the bag is only the start of the story, which is why the amount question belongs with a veterinarian who knows your animal's weight, age, liver values and other medications.

Why THC Is the Real Danger for Dogs

If there is one safety point to take from this guide, it is this: the documented emergency with cannabis and dogs is THC, not CBD. Cornell's Riney Canine Health Center says dogs are "much more sensitive to the effects of cannabis than humans" because "they have a higher density of cannabinoid receptors in their brains." The Merck Veterinary Manual is more specific. It notes that dogs have a higher concentration of CB1 receptors in the cerebellum and medulla oblongata. Merck suggests that may explain the ataxia and the cardiovascular and respiratory effects seen in poisoned dogs.

Calls rose through 2022. The ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center reported in March 2023 that it fielded nearly 11% more marijuana-related calls in 2022 than the year before, and a nearly 300% increase over five years. The most common cases involve baked goods and other edibles, which are more dangerous than plant material. In a Triangle context that matters: 74 of the 81 shops in our directory list THCA flower and 53 list edibles, so a household that buys hemp at all may have THC products within a dog's reach.

Merck says signs typically appear within 1 to 2 hours of eating THC, up to 4 hours in a dog with an empty stomach, and that cases are usually self-limiting within 1 to 3 days, with death extremely rare. Cornell adds that there is no antidote, that signs can last up to 72 hours, and that owners should not induce vomiting in a dog that is already showing signs. If you suspect your dog ate a THC product, call your veterinarian, an emergency hospital, the Pet Poison Helpline at 855-764-7661, or the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center at 888-426-4435. Store gummies the way you would store medication, a point our edibles guide makes for children too.

This is also why "hemp-derived" on a pet label tells you very little. A full-spectrum hemp extract can legally contain some THC. For a pet product, the useful label words are "THC-free" or "broad spectrum," backed by a lab report that shows THC as not detected, from a lab whose detection limit is low enough for the container size.

Cats Are Not Small Dogs

Almost everything in this guide is better studied in dogs than in cats, and the cat data that exists says cats handle CBD differently. Owners with both should not assume a dog product, or a dog-sized fraction of one, translates.

The clearest evidence is absorption. In the 12-week dog and cat study, cats given the same 2 mg/kg reached a peak blood level about one seventh of what dogs reached, and the authors observed excessive licking and head-shaking during oil dosing. Palatability is a recurring problem. In the 2025 Utrecht arthritis trial, 12 of 26 cats dropped out, mainly because they refused to eat the paste, and some vomited. That study scored pain partly with the Feline Musculoskeletal Pain Index developed by North Carolina State University's Translational Research in Pain program, a reminder that some of the field's measurement tools come out of Raleigh.

Sources: Deabold 2019 (Animals), Gamble 2018, Coltherd 2024, Flint 2025 and Vaughn 2020 (Frontiers in Veterinary Science), McGrath 2019 (JAVMA), Doran 2021 (AJVR), Kulpa 2021 and Mulder 2025 (Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery).

The tolerance ceilings in the last row are often quoted out of context. They came from single doses escalated in healthy research animals, in the beagle study and the cat study, given at least three days apart and monitored closely. They show that a single large CBD dose was not acutely toxic in those animals. They say nothing about what is useful or safe to give a pet daily.

CBD for Anxiety and Calming Chews: The Weakest Evidence

Calming chews and "CBD for dogs to calm them" are widely marketed, and calming is the use the research supports least. The controlled tests that exist mostly did not find an effect from CBD on its own.

The University of Kentucky study fed 16 dogs CBD treats for seven days and then played a fireworks recording. Trazodone, the prescription drug the study used as a comparison, lowered the stress hormone cortisol. CBD did not, and the authors concluded that their results "do not support an anxiolytic effect of CBD in dogs" at the amount they tested. A 2025 Waltham study of 54 dogs on a short car ride tested CBD at 2 and 4 mg/kg and found no significant effect from CBD alone. The only measurable result came from a treat that combined CBD with L-tryptophan and alpha-casozepine, which produced a smaller rise in cortisol, an effect the authors called mild.

A 2021 shelter study in Rome found that dogs given CBD showed less aggression toward people over 45 days compared with their own starting point, but the difference between the CBD group and the placebo group was not statistically significant, and other stress behaviors did not change.

None of that proves CBD cannot help any anxious animal. It does mean a calming chew is the category where marketing has run furthest ahead of evidence. If your dog panics at thunderstorms or fireworks, that is a conversation for your veterinarian, who can walk through prescription and behavioral options rather than a treat alone.

CBD for Arthritis and Senior Dogs: The Strongest Signal

Arthritis, including in senior dogs, is where the dog research looks most encouraging. It is still a small evidence base, and the details are worth knowing before anyone treats it as settled.

The 2018 Cornell trial enrolled 22 dogs with osteoarthritis confirmed on X-ray and analyzed 16. In a crossover design, each dog spent four weeks on CBD oil at 2 mg/kg twice daily and four weeks on a placebo oil, with neither owners nor veterinarians told which was which. On CBD, owner-scored pain on the Canine Brief Pain Inventory fell from an average of 21 to 14 by week two, and activity scores rose. Veterinarians found less pain on palpation. Lameness and weight-bearing scores, however, did not change significantly. The study was funded by the company that supplied the product, and the authors called for longer studies with more dogs.

The cat arthritis trial published in 2025 also found lower pain scores after six weeks, again with funding from the product's maker and a dropout rate the authors themselves called concerning.

A senior animal may already be on other medications, which raises the stakes of the side-effect and drug-interaction questions covered below. Our guide to CBD for pain in people covers the human evidence separately, and the two should not be confused: a human product, with its own dose and possible THC content, is not a pet product.

What the Label Says vs What Is in the Bottle

Even if you and your veterinarian settle on an amount, the label has to be accurate for that number to mean anything. The best published test of pet hemp products suggests it often is not.

A 2020 study in Veterinary Medicine: Research and Reports bought 29 pet hemp products found through a simple internet search and tested them at an accredited laboratory. All were below the federal 0.3% THC limit of the time. But only 10 of the 27 products with a label claim measured within 10% of the cannabinoid content they advertised. The median product contained 93% of its claim, and the range ran from 0% to 154%. Four of the 29 contained heavy metals, with lead the most common.

Translate that into a dropper. Suppose a 30 mL oil is labeled 300 mg of CBD, so 10 mg per mL. If the product sits anywhere in that study's observed range, a full mL could hold anywhere from nothing to about 15 mg. For a small dog, that spread can be the difference between a research-protocol amount and several times it. The study's authors put it this way: owners and veterinarians "should obtain a COA enabling them to fully discuss the implications of use" before giving a product to a pet. That is why the batch-matched COA matters more than the front label.

That 2020 market is not today's market, and products may have improved. But FDA has not approved any of these products, so no federal premarket review has checked what is in them, and the only check you control is the paperwork.

How to Read a Pet CBD Certificate of Analysis

A certificate of analysis, or COA, is the lab report for a specific production batch. Our general guide on how to read a COA walks through the format line by line. For a pet product the same rules apply, with a few lines that matter more than they do for people.

Start with the match. The batch or lot number on the COA must match the one printed on the container in your hand. A COA for a different batch, or one with no batch number at all, tells you about some other bottle. Then look at the date, the lab name, and whether the lab states an accreditation such as ISO/IEC 17025. After that, read the cannabinoid panel and the contaminant panels.

Sources: Wakshlag 2020 (Veterinary Medicine: Research and Reports); FDA, Paws Off Xylitol.

If a seller cannot produce a batch-matched COA, that is your answer. In the 2020 test, 7 of 29 products had no COA available at all.

Side Effects, Liver Values and Drug Interactions

The most consistent finding across the dog studies is not about benefit. It is a rise in alkaline phosphatase, or ALP, a liver-associated enzyme on routine bloodwork. It showed up in the Cornell arthritis trial, where 9 of 16 dogs had increases by week four, in the Colorado State epilepsy trial, and in a Colorado State drug-interaction study at higher amounts. Researchers have not established what the ALP rise means clinically, and in the Cornell study the related enzyme ALT did not rise. That uncertainty is a good reason to ask your veterinarian about baseline and follow-up bloodwork.

Other effects reported in studies were mostly mild: loose stool and other digestive signs, and in cats, licking, head-shaking and refusal. In the epilepsy trial, 2 of 12 dogs on CBD developed ataxia and were withdrawn.

Drug interactions are the other open question, and researchers have treated them as a real concern. The one canine study that tested it directly, giving CBD alongside the seizure drug phenobarbital to nine healthy beagles, did not find a significant interaction in either direction. That is one drug, in healthy dogs, at study doses. It is not a clearance for any other medication or for a sick animal, and a dog on seizure medication should never have its regimen changed without the prescribing veterinarian.

What FDA, the Federal Hemp Rewrite and North Carolina Mean for Pet Products

Pet CBD sits in an unusual legal spot: widely sold, never approved, and now inside a federal hemp definition that names animals explicitly.

FDA. In its cannabis question-and-answer page, FDA says it "has not approved cannabis for any use in animals, and the agency cannot ensure the safety or effectiveness of these products," and recommends owners talk with a veterinarian. Its legal position is that it is prohibited to introduce any food, "including any animal food or feed," with added CBD into interstate commerce under section 301(ll) of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. It also says there are no approved feed ingredient definitions or GRAS conclusions for any hemp-derived substance in animal food. In January 2025, FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine requested public comments on cannabis-derived products in animals. It asked veterinarians in particular. That request did not change the rules.

The federal hemp rewrite. Section 781 of P.L. 119-37 defines a hemp-derived cannabinoid product as one "intended for human or animal use through any means of application or administration, such as inhalation, ingestion, or topical application." Its cap on final products, "greater than 0.4 milligrams combined total per container" of total THC and similar cannabinoids, therefore applies to pet oils and chews the same way it applies to a gummy. That part of the law takes effect on December 11, 2026. A container is "the innermost wrapping, packaging, or vessel," with "jar, bottle, bag, box, packet" among the examples.

The arithmetic shows why this matters for full-spectrum pet oils. At an oil density of about 0.95 grams per mL, a 30 mL bottle weighs about 28.5 grams, so it crosses 0.4 mg of total THC once THC exceeds roughly 0.0014% of its weight. A COA reading "not detected" only helps if the lab's detection limit is below that line, so ask the seller or lab what the limit was. Our reading is that a genuinely THC-free pet CBD product survives the rewrite, but FDA's cannabinoid lists that Section 781 calls for are still unpublished, so treat that as an interpretation, not settled guidance. Our hemp ban explainer covers the two federal dates in detail.

North Carolina. The state has no pet-specific CBD law. HB 328 would add a state total-THC test and a 0.4 mg cap of its own under the conference report the Senate adopted on July 2, 2026. The House has not voted on that conference report; the bill's last action was a July 30, 2026 re-referral to House Rules. Our HB 328 tracker follows it.

Talking to Your Veterinarian About CBD in North Carolina

Many veterinarians have historically been cautious about discussing CBD. A survey of 2,130 U.S. veterinarians was published in January 2019 with a North Carolina State University co-author. It found 61.5% were comfortable discussing CBD with colleagues but only 45.5% with clients. Illegality was the most common reason respondents gave for not prescribing it.

Some states have addressed that directly. California's AB 2215, signed in September 2018 and effective January 1, 2019, added a section to its veterinary code on discussing cannabis with clients, and the state's Veterinary Medical Board now publishes formal guidelines for discussion and recommendation. North Carolina has nothing comparable in statute. The state's Veterinary Practice Act, Article 11 of Chapter 90 of the General Statutes, does not mention cannabis, hemp, marijuana or CBD at all.

In practice, that means a North Carolina veterinarian's comfort with the subject varies, and it is reasonable to ask directly. Bring the product, or a photo of the label and its COA. Tell your vet every medication and supplement your animal takes. Ask whether baseline bloodwork makes sense first, and whether there is an approved option for the problem you are trying to solve. Veterinarians can legally prescribe approved human drugs for animals in some circumstances, under the federal extralabel-use rules FDA describes, which is a different path from an over-the-counter pet product.

Based on the studies above and FDA's cannabis question-and-answer page.

Where to Find Pet CBD in the Triangle

Pet products are a small slice of what Triangle hemp shops carry. Pets are not a product category our directory tracks, and only two of the 81 listings, The Hemp Company in Raleigh and The Holistic Company of Smithfield, currently name pet products in their listing details. Others may stock a pet line without our listing saying so, so call ahead.

Wherever you shop, the in-person advantage is the same one our guide to choosing a dispensary describes: you can ask for the batch-matched COA and read it before you pay.

This article is educational and describes published research and publicly available law as of October 26, 2026. It is not veterinary or legal advice. Talk with a licensed veterinarian before giving any cannabinoid product to an animal.