Rawhide bones/chews

[PADZZ]

My dog (yellow lab) EATS a 14 inch long rawhide bone thing in about 45 minutes. Swallows it and all. Is that OK? How many per week should I allow her to eat?

[N_Jay]

Originally posted by PADZZ
My dog (yellow lab) EATS a 14 inch long rawhide bone thing in about 45 minutes. Swallows it and all. Is that OK? How many per week should I allow her to eat?

Talk to your vet, but it sounds like he needs a more resilliant dog toy.

[jay]

I found this on vetinfo.com

Rawhides, safe

Q: My 10 month old shih tzu is not a very aggressive chewer--but she loves rawhide. I've heard some people had dogs who had all kinds of digestive problems. She has all kinds of other chewing toys--but really loves rawhide. I'm afraid she'll have stomach problems.-- Also she has a bed made of fleece (like lambswool). She tends to dig in it and then eats the fuzz. Can this also be harmful --like getting a lump of this stuff in her stomach??

A: I have been in practice for 18 years and I have only treated one dog that I remember for problems associated with ingestion of rawhide. This dog swallowed one of the formed rawhide sticks whole. This caused her to begin vomiting and it continued long enough that we surgically removed the rawhide chew toy. I do not consider this to be a high risk and give my dogs rawhide chew toys (but I do have to admit that I avoid the pressed rawhide sticks because of that problem).

It is interesting to me that a number of veterinarians I have spoken with do say that they have seen problems associated with these toys. Their experience differs from mine. I practice in a rural area and sometimes I think that I just don't have enough patients to see all the problems that vets who practice in more crowded areas do. Still, my personal experience is that rawhides appear to be a reasonably safe chew toy.

When dogs chew really fuzzy toys or objects it seems to wear their teeth down sooner. The fibers sometimes build up between the gums and teeth, too. I haven't yet seen many digestive problems from these things, either. I do have at least one or two dogs that have some vomiting episodes that relate to eating wool or fuzzy fabrics.

Mike Richards, DVM

[trlengle]

Rawhide bones are very difficult for dogs to digest. They are a good chew toy every once in a while but I would not make it a daily chew toy for your dog. I would steer you towards Bully stick, pigs ears, hooves as these products are easily digestible. The hooves take for ever to go through but they also smell a bit.

[guitarman]

I was told by a dog trainer never to give a dog a toy that he can destroy within a matter of minutes or hours. I suppose the reasoning is similar to why you shouldn't give your dog an old shoe to play with. He can't tell the difference between the shoe that's oK to destroy and your $200 Florsheim's. I give my golden retriever a Nylabone to play with. It's good for his teeth, satisfies his urge to chew, and lasts for months.

[Art]

My dogs love rawhide, but don't get it much. They tend to drink a lot after, meaning they have to be let out a lot, and it tends to give them "GAS".

[TheWorm]

We tried a rawhide once with our Golden. She was chewing it up and scarfing it down so quickly I actually took it away from her. Probably at about the same pace as your Lab.

We've since (several years) been giving her Nylabone's "souper size" chicken-flavored bones. She likes those and we don't have to worry about digestion, choking, or the smell. The Nylabones last a LONG time. For a special treat, we'll smear some peanut butter on the end of the bone and she'll go to town.

FWIW.

[Art]

Originally posted by TheWorm
We tried a rawhide once with our Golden. She was chewing it up and scarfing it down so quickly I actually took it away from her. Probably at about the same pace as your Lab.

We've since (several years) been giving her Nylabone's "souper size" chicken-flavored bones. She likes those and we don't have to worry about digestion, choking, or the smell. The Nylabones last a LONG time. For a special treat, we'll smear some peanut butter on the end of the bone and she'll go to town.

FWIW.

Yep, my dogs love their Nylabone.....lasts long and they get a decent teeth cleaning out of it.

[PADZZ]

Thanks for the replies!

Well, Soda, the dog in question, eats, or chews EVERYTHING. She's actually chewed off a corner of our house foundation-CEMENT . Rawhide just happens to be her favorite becasue she can devour it. She doesn't seem to be sufferng any ill effects...yet. I'll just cut it down to one a week. It's amazing how fast she destryos this stuff. The pig ears and things shaped like that cut her mouth due the sharp edges. These bones I give her are tied off at the ends w/ no sharp edges. She's 15 months old and weighs ~70 LBS.

[guitarman]

Labs are great dogs. Unfortunately, they do like to chew. That will settle down in about 3 or 4 years!

[booger]

I've had several labs that I use for hunting that I trained myself.
They are just too hardheaded to mess with, so I've switched to Shorthairs and spanials.

If your dog is chewing things up, then it's a discipline problem. Train the dog to mind you and let it know that chewing is not acceptable and it will stop chewing.

A well trained, well behaved dog will swim through burning oil to make it's master happy and if chewing makes the boss unhappy, the dog won't do it!!

Don't buy more chew toys, spend more time with the dog and make sure he/she knows who is the boss and that chewing is wrong.

Sorry about the rant, but undisciplined dogs drive me nuts!!

[trlengle]

Well said Booger! It takes time and patience to train but the payoff is huge.

[PADZZ]

I know where you're coming from and she does know who's boss. I spend just about every free moment I have with her; she's well trained. Eating things is just one thing I can't stop her from doing when I'm gone. She even eats her friggen wooden dog house. Knaws on all the edges. I'm just thinking she's just a pup and will (hopefully) grow out of it. She has free roam of 1/2 acre and I like it that way. I really don't like to keep her confined to her kennel while I'm at work (12 hours-0600-1800).

[Sunday Rider]

I have 2 chocolate labs and they both love to chew. Like others said earlier the nylabone is great we have lots of them all over the house. One of the labs is very strong (on my avatar) and can chew all day long. She was corrected when she was young that the furniture was out. The raw hide was similar to yours, gone in 5 minutes, but they both had diarrhea after. So I stopped.

I find when I run them they settle down. The 4 year old has not settled at all. The 5 year old is mellow, and always was. Everyone said the wild one would settle after a couple of years. We are still waiting, but she is lots of fun, and will fetch a stick all day.

[PSUPilot]

We currently have a chocolate lab and she also is a very heavy chewer. In addition to Nylabones, she likes her Kong and we get large beef bones from the butcher. You must prepare the bones before you give them to the dog though and we usually start outside because they can still be a little messy. To prepare them cut as much meat off the bone as possible and clean the inside as well as you can, then boil the bone and repeat the cleaning, you want to end up with a bone that has as little meat as possible (less mess for you to clean up). These are the only toys that have lasted through our current dog's chewing and she is only 9 months old.