Raw bone feeders, question for you.

BEVOLASVEGAS

I have determined that starting a puppy on raw is much easier than transitioning an adult.  Cher is eating one raw meal, one kibble meal, & one home cooked meal a day.  She gulps the kibble & cooked, but she's a great chewer with her raw.  I can hand her a neck, & she chews it so nicely.  Just something to think about....

another reason to get a pup?  I'm sure this will swing DH ha ha ha ha

BEVOLASVEGAS

I cannot believe that he insists on eating on his towel! 

Bugsy is special in his own way 

kpwlee

another reason to get a pup?  I'm sure this will swing DH ha ha ha ha

Just a talking point.  You know, for when the time is right....

I haven't read the other responses, yet. But, I too, dabble in the dark side of the force. Just a little while ago, I gave Shadow a raw deer bone (main leg bone from a doe) and still had some muscle and tissue on it. He gnawed and chewed on it for a few hours. And cracked it in half. First off, the bone (one of three) has been sitting in the deep freeze for probably a month or more. My old working friend John hunts deer and gives me some. He would give wild hog bones to his dog Gus, the Sharpei. And his dad, formerly a breeder of Beagles, always fed his dogs raw. So, he thought I might give them to Shadow. Anyway, I know that freezing kills most bugs. And I had Shadow eat it outside. And washed my hands after handling it. When he cracked it in half, I took the slightly smaller piece and threw that away. And then when he was done mostly, with the second piece, I disposed of that, too. We do have Lyme Disease in Texas but I have eaten the deer meat (cooked) that my friend John hunts in Oklahoma and haven't had a problem. And this bone was mostly bone and cartilege. When he broke the bone, it was a clean break, probably because of being raw yet maybe a still a little frozen. I had nuked it to take the chill off.

I don't think I would feed Shadow raw all the time, at least not right now. But I'm not against it like I was before. And I think it adds to the enrichment of his life. He is 6.5 years old now. He won't live forever and ought to have a few real bones in his life. And John hunts every season and this year was a big one. He shot 3 deer (doe) himself, basically getting one each time he bothered to get up and hunt. His dad got a doe. And helped some young'ns in his church go hunting and they got an 8-point buck. At least a quarter of the meat in my freezer is deer meat, and that's not counting the two sets of deer ribs I smoked on the grill a month ago. I've even hinted I will take the organ meat for Shadow.

Normally, John gives the deer ribs to his dog and his dad's dogs. This time, he gave them to me to smoke and I did such a good job with them, he has vowed to never just give the ribs to the dogs, again.

I control Shadow's access to real bones because he guards those like no one's business.

Ron....you're alive!!!!!!!!

dyan

Ron....you're alive!!!!!!!!

Yeah, I'm still here. Every now and then, I have to go off and fight windmills.

I don't know if anone has already mentioned this as I went from the oldest page right to newest page, but I have a few things of concern about marrow bones.  First of all, I do give them to my dogs as they enjoy them tremendously.  But..I've had one bad experience with a marrow bone with a dog I had quite a few years ago who taught me this lesson.  When you buy marrow bones, make sure the bone is cut long enough that your dog can't get their bottom jaw threaded through the hole in the middle.  My fox terrier at that time managed to get her bottom jaw put right through the middle and then couldn't get it back off.  Bottom jaw swelled around the bone because she was panicking and fighting to get it off.  I had to take her to the vet who subsequently put her under anesthesia just to use a bone cutter to cut it off.  That vet told me at that time that they were used to seeing that quite frequently. 

Now, with my current mini schnauzer, he absolutely LOVES marrow bones, but I limit them because while they don't seem to be bad for him physically, the rest of us pay because they give him some house clearing smelly gas.  That actually is the reason that brought me here in the first place.  I've just recently registered here myself because I came here looking for something I could use to fill the hole where the marrow was so he could still gnaw on the bone and maybe save us the smell!  I've seen some recipes I'm about to make, so thanks for the recipes, all!

 Mine will happily chew the stripped bones. Does he not chew them plain???

Oh yes, he does still quite a bit, but I just wanted to make it a bit more entertaining for him to keep him busy with it for a longer time.  We have a whole lot of snow still on the ground where I live, so, unfortunately, his outside play area has become a whole lot more limited and it's apparent he's getting antsy.  While we are doing what we can with him try to release some of that built up energy, it seems it's still not enough.  So, I thought maybe keeping his time busy with a filled bone might do the trick.  I'm just trying to avoid the last option if possible - going out and shoveling out a larger area for him to go out and romp in.  (Even after melting, there's still about a foot of snow on the ground, so it'd take me awhile...ugh.)