brookcove
Posted : 3/1/2009 11:41:54 PM
You'd freak out if you watched my little Maggie dog eat. She takes pork bones and crunches a couple times (basically snaps them in half) and swallows them whole. One time I had occasion to take her in to get x-rayed just a couple hours after she ate. The doctor tossed the films up on the light box, gave a little start, then said, "Oh, that's a little bit of bone she had for breakfast, right?"
There was a faint highlight about the size of your thumb in her stomach, all rounded edges. That's all that was left of a pound of chicken quarter - two leg bones, back and ribs in other words.
If it goes down the hatch and you aren't feeding COOKED bones, then it's safe in the stomach. The stomach doesn't let solid food proceed to the gut. Things like rubber balls, plastic chew toys, and socks end up there because they aren't natural and there's no defense system to keep from passing them. That's true of cooked bones too.
But something like a raw bone is quickly attacked by a broth of enzymes and acid and reduced to hydrolyzed collagen (which is squishy) and component minerals. This doesn't take long at all. It takes a crock pot about 24 hours to do the same thing to a chicken bone, a pressure cooker about four hours (if you had one that could perform this function), and the stomach just a few hours, tops.
Choking is your biggest danger with a gulper, but I can't imagine a dog that size having a problem with a wing.