I think my dog needs more stuff to chew. But I’ve been told by various people that beef hooves, pig ears and rawhides are not safe for dogs. Is this the consensus, and if so, what is safe to give to my dog? My dog currently has rope toys, Nylabones and a Kong toy (the octagonal shaped one), but a Kong toy full of biscuits only last an hour, and she doesn’t seem too interested in the rope toys and Nylabones. She’d rather chew my pillow, my pants, my mattress or the carpet. Last week she even chewed up my GPS receiver. :eek:
My dog wouldn’t chew anything unless there was another dog there who wanted to chew on it too. Sometimes Bird Man and I could fake her out by trying to chew ourselves, but it didn’t work very well, so we had to get creative.
First thing I did was go to the grocery store and buy “Soup Bones” from the meat section. Big joints and marrow bones and whatnot with meat hanging off them, she loved them! Until she got all the meat and marrow out upon which she left them on the floor by the bathroom in the middle of the night for us to step on. Thanks Lucy! :smack: So she did get some chewing out of those, but didn’t finish them or anything, and they could get messy with the blood and whatnot.
Second idea–I took her to PetCo’s doggy chew treat section and let her sniff around. Anything she took a passing interest in I bought and took home to try out. Her favorite? Foot long Bully Sticks. Turns out my dog luuuurrrves the c*ck. She will actually grind them down to little stubs then stick the stub in her cheek and chew it like gum. So I guess my advice is let your dog find something she likes.
I’ve never heard of any of the chews you mention being unsafe :dubious: Ok a raw hide chew ingested quickly may give a bit of a digestive upset but ‘unsafe’ ?
Our dog, a collie/lab cross (yeah right! “Five pounds to a good home” and terrier digging skills to die for) lived to over 18. She regularly had hide chews - the ‘cigar style’ ones - pretty much every time she was going into kennels or was going to be left alone for a long stretch (over 3 hours say), she also had the odd calf’s hoof and, her favourite and longest lasting a ‘marrow bone’ - an empty length of sterilized white bone, excellent value she got through a grand total of two her entire life ! This was some time ago but I think we got them from the butcher (?). From time to time she would get a ‘real’, uncooked, bone from the butcher too although not very often as they are very rich.
I can imagine someone has argued what if a hard stick like chew got thrust into the roof of a mouth during play ? What about choking on a detached knot of hide from a bone shaped chew (with knots at either end) ? But IMHO get the dog something she/he can happily munch to save you money and the both of you stress.
(PS She also got and loved fish once a week, just the odds and ends of some white fish from the Fishman, the parents swear that contributed to her shiny coat.)
I haven’t tried those yet - they’re kind of expensive. (Much cheaper than GPS receivers though!) Are those long-lasting chews, or “treats” that are eaten up quickly?
Maybe I’m over-protective but I don’t trust myself or pet shops to choose what’s safe for my dog. Though I suppose raw bones can’t be all that bad…
My vet told me that hooves are too hard and can damage the teeth. I’m not too sure about rawhides and pig’s ears, but I’ve read that advice on multiple sources (without explaining why, admittedly).
My Elkhound is a chewer of the first order and will make most rawhides disappear within 15 minutes until I found some raw hides wrapped up as bones from Costco. They last about a day each. I’ve never had any problems with her and pigs ears, either, thought they don’t last long. She did get violently sick from some prepackaged, basted dog-bones from Costco, but the ones from the local market she loves.
Hooves also smell bad as they are being chewed. Pig ears often cause gastrointestinal upset IME. Rawhide is fine if it is a product of the US. Imported rawhide (which is the vast majority of the market) does not have to pass the same level of inspection as US hides.
Personally, I would give the dog rawhide of US origin.
Rawhide and hooves are dangerous depending on your dog’s chewing style. If your dog tears off large chunks and eats them, then you can’t give them rawhide because it might become lodged in their intestines. But if your dog is a gnawer or nibbler who just basically shaves away at it, you should be okay. If he has terrible gas afterwards, his system can’t tolerate it, though, and you’ll have to take it away.
Dogs love soup bones, but again, if your dog chews off hunks and swallows them, you could have trouble. If you’re going to give him soup bones, boil them for a good long while to harden up the bone before you give it to him.
Cornstarch bones are awesome for dogs. They usually give a hard-chewer a couple of hours of fun, and a “nibbler” can chew on them for days.
Another thing you can do with the Kong: fill it with treats and penut butter and put it in the freezer overnight. It gives them hours and hours of yummy fun. (I actually have a couple that I rotate. Whenever I give the dogs one of them, I fill another and put it in the freezer, so one will always be available.)
Rope toys are good chew items, too. I smear them with penut butter or meat juice occasionally to make them interesting. They last for a long, long time. Generally, after the dog has chewed them in half, they’ll play with both ends-- so you get two toys!
I like to give my dogs stuffed animals, because my older dog is getting a little tender in the mouth. I’ve bought one which is designed to be torn apart again and again (made of tough Velcro pieces) which she loves. Eventuallym though, you’ll have stuffing “guts” everywhere. If that doesn’t bother you, then stuffed toys can give hours of fun. They sell ones just for dogs, of course. The best I’ve found are the Battle Tested brand which are incredibly tough.
If you sew, or know anyone who does, you can always cut up old jeans and use the denim to make stuffed toys which will last a while.
Sometimes I buy my dogs children’s stuffed toys at discount stores. You can often get them for less than a buck, and if the dogs tear them up in a day, you’re not really out anything. (The ones designed for infants are the best, because they don’t have buttons or other pieces which can choke a dog.) Give them a firm tug in the store to see how well-constructed they are.
Here’s a fun outdoor chew toy for your dog on hot summer days: Put some chicken broth in a plastic zip-loc baggie and put in some pieces of hotdog or dog treats. Freeze overnight. Tear off the baggie in the morning, and give it to your dog. They should chew on it for hours. It’s pretty messy, though, so that’s why I suggested outdoor use.
My 30 pound dog goes through a regular sized one in about 30 minutes.
Auggie, The Cutest Dog on the Planet ™, loves Flossies. I always get the jumbo kind. They are corkscrew shaped tendony things, and the shape is supposed to keep their teeth clean. They don’t last a really long time, though- I can get through the morning newspaper and two cups of coffee in peace when Auggie has a flossie.
I also second the knucklebone suggestion- Aug loves those and tends to just shave little bits off. One will usually last him for several days. Go to Merrick's website, they have a lot of neat stuff,I (and my vet) suggest getting rid of the Nylabones. Our dogs chewed them every day and had cracked molars in less than a year. I’m taking them in on Tuesday to see if the teeth need to be pulled.
based on a lab and a lab/chow cross.
The only thing our dogs like that has proved durable are the sterilized beef leg bones ~ 6" long. They get about 6 mos. out of them. They love chewing most of the other options, but they don’t last an hour. Beef hooves are somewhat durable but stink to high heaven.
My dog’s a Maltese and she loves chewing anything that has my family’s scent on it. She does like the stores from the pet shops, but she practically attacks anything that smells like us to her. So, I ended up giving her a bunch of my small stuffed animals. My dog also loves jumping around in our clothes and playing with them, so my brother and I cut out pieces of fabrics from our old old clothes, sewed them together and stuffed them with cotton into little balls (unfortunately, they kind of wore out fast). She also likes these things called Dent-a-Bones. They’re supposed to taste good for the dog and it helps clean their teeth.
My folks’ two shepherd crosses love their kongs, stuffed with peanut butter, carrots, and milk bones.
And nookies. Which are, um…not what you’re thinking. This is a nookie.
I have a great dane, and he likes to eat my books when I am not around. I asked my vet about it, and he said that the dog will chew on things that have my scent. He suggested sleeping with a blanket one night then giving the blanket to the dog when I have to leave. Sounds silly but it worked. I also suggest rope bones, my baby loves his. He also likes pigs ears but they don’t last for more than five minutes.
Second on marrow bones in the meat section. Best value to chew time ratio that I’ve found. Takes my boxer the better part of two hours to get through one, and they probably only cost about a quarter each. I just keep a bunch in the freezer and give them to him as needed.
Kongs stuffed with dog food, and put in the freezer overnight is also a time killer for him. Put something particularly stinky (freeze dried liver) on the bottom and something easy sticking out of the top. I leave him one of these every day, and he must fall asleep trying to get everything out cause he only finishes with it when I get home.
We’ve recently adopted two 60 pound dogs. Border Collie (yep she’s a big one) and a Border Veiesla (sp) Lab mix.
We have done the ‘arm’ part of cow bones and stuff them with peanut butter. They love the treat part of course, but the bone is so tough, they give up.
The knuckle part of this bone seems much softer though. It’s about as big as a large mans fist or a very small boxing glove. We buy the bleached ones at pet stores. Bleached may not be the right word. I think they are boiled for a long time. They are white in color and the dogs love them.
The ‘chips’ that come of them are usually no bigger than a pea and it doesn’t make a real mess.
They last weeks for us, so when they seem to be getting a little small, we chuck and give them new ones. There about $5US.
They love the greenies too. We buy the small ones by the bag. They only last a few minutes.
I gave my previous dog raw-hides. But I must say, sometimes they would get unraveled, and I worry a little more about the choking aspect with them.
Or maybe he saves it - ours would quite often save the chew she’d been left with & present it to us (well fetch it, not give it to us) on our return before consuming it. Seriously a chew could be untouched for a week in kennels even.
I’m surprised to hear about so many peanut butter eating woofs, what is the theory behind giving them this ? A different protein source ? What does it do to their digestion ?
enipla
There certainly are a lot of Vizslas running around Colorado these days. I suppose they fit in with our state’s ubiquitous Labs and Goldens.
We had a Vizsla mix for 14 years; she was still chasing the tennis ball the week she died.
We have English Mastiffs now and they have very large and powerful mouths, and one of them has the unhappy combination of wanting to eat anything yet having a delicate digestive system. Bones from the butcher can be a lot of fun, but our dogs don’t just chew on them, they quickly ingest them and end up with diahrrea.
We do not do pig’s ears or hooves for the reasons already mentioned above and in this thread. Cornstarch bones and greenies are fine but they literally last seconds. We do stuffed animals on occasion, but only if we are right there to supervise–then the toy is put away or shredded, whichever comes first.
We do the biggest rope toys. Plus Nylabones and Nylabone’s big cousins:
Galileo bones
Also, we’ve had really good luck with JW pet toys, the funny little shapes as well as the Invincible Rings. We’ve had the Rings (3 interlocked black and yellow rings) for about 6 months now and they are holding up well.
We never do rawhides.
We will put pieces of lamb-and-rice treats inside giant Kongs, but not all that often.
I can’t imagine doing the peanut butter idea, it sounds too smelly and slobbery for our household.
Our dogs split a banana every night.