Rawhide

I give my dogs rawhides on occasion and have never had a problem with choking or blockages. They are only allowed to chew on them when supervised, and the same goes with bully sticks and nylabones.   I pretty much follow the everything in moderation school of thought regarding it.

As far as the chemicals, I think it's only for the bleached rawhide. I know my dog prefers animal/food based chews much more than nylabones and other manufactured chews. If a dog doesn't chew off and swallow hunks of the rawhide, then I don't think blockages would be a worry. The compressed bones seem to slow them down a lot too. The main problem with my dog and rawhide is that it gets soggy and stuck in his beard.

Thanks guys. I guess I won't feel guilty if I buy them some rawhides now and then, but only compressed ones. They sure will be happy about that.

 I have never had a problem with rolled rawhide. That is my primary choice for chewies for the dogs. I tried pressed rawhide for a while but did not like how the bits broke off. I thought the pieces looked sharp.

My favorites are the Dingo bones with "meat in the middle."  My boys go crazy for these and they seem to go down nicely.  With some of the rawhide chips & knotty bones, Luke will often do the chew/swallow/gag/chew and I hate that.

They're not for aggressive chewers, though.  Luke has his gone in a matter of minutes (small size, granted) -- but Kaiser's will last a day or more depending on how much he chews on it.

Rawhide, compressed or otherwise, just doesn't digest well.  It's not what it looks like when it goes in.  It's how it clumps up once inside.  I suspect the stories of blockages come from people who feed them regularly, possibly as a daily chew toy.  But, there's no doubt that it can swell up and apparently this is how the problems occur.

Additionally, it's imperative that you look for chews that are made in the US only - it's legal in other countries to use poison to produce these chews. 

There's risks to everything -  you just have to decide which ones are more palatable to you (no pun intended).

nylabones aren't entirely safe either, dogs can get chunks lodged in their intestine. I've never heard of a bully stick being a health hazard, and you CAN buy ones that don't stink if you look around.

Finding rawhide around here that's made in the USA is impossible, I've done given up and refuse to give any kind of rawhide.

My one little pom nearly died 2yrs ago, he swallowed everything just fine, hours later he simply burped like he was notorious for, only that time, food came back up. It wasn't pretty...he nearly stopped breathing, fell over, peed on himself.

After that we said no more, and our dogs did NOT get them but maybe once a week.

I purchase raw beef soup bones from our local King Soopers, dogs love them and there's nothing to swallow except flavor and some muscle meat that's left on them, which isn't much.

Make sure they are made in the USA. They are more expensive, but safer.

I think they are okay for once in a while chewing.  My dogs fight and gaurd theirs, so no more rawhide in this house. Before than, I would give them a rawhide chew about once a month, when I was out buying their food I'd pick them each up one. I think in extreme moderation they are fine.  I don't think nutritionally they should have them too often.

If you keep her totally supervised it should be okay. I always gave rawhide to my dogs until I found Velvet my beagle choking on a big gooey hunk of rawhide she'd been working on. She was laying on the floor acting really weird and I saw a white thing hanging out of her mouth. When I pulled it, a whole blob came after it out of her throat! The funny thing is, after she shook it off she tried to grab the rawhide out of my hand. She was chewing one of the GIANT rolled kinds and was able to get off a piece too big for her. I still let them have rawhide at times when I'd like them to be quiet and I can keep an eye on them (watching a movie, etc.) just never leave her alone with it.