Injury from raw bones??

SandyPuppy

My neighbor bought some beef knuckle bones for her dog at Naturally 4 Paws. She was boiling them before giving them to her dog and everything was fine. Then I told her about how everyone on this forum says you are supposed to feed them raw and its dangerous to cook them first. So she started giving them raw and now her dog is having bloody diahrrea with chunks of bone in it!

I had bought some beef marrow bones from the same store and have been giving them to Sandy raw, straight from the freezer, and she isn't having any problems.

Another friend of mine buys "smoked" beef leg bones for her dogs from the same store. Any opinions on smoked bones?

briteday

Any type of cooking...boiling, roasting, smoking, ... changes the molecular structure of the bone making it more dense and less moist, and more likely to splinter rather than crush into bits when chewed.

I suspect the problem with the raw marrow bones is that the marrow is WAY too rich for the dog, thus GI upset and bloody stools. Chunks of bone really don't mean anything. But if my dog could do more than "gnaw" on a recreational bone I would find something larger so they couldn't chew off chunks...or better yet, switch to bully sticks for chewing.

SandyPuppy

Her dog got knuckle bones, not marrow bones. And she had no problem with the bones until she stopped boiling them.

My dog is the one that got raw marrow bones and she is fine.

Canadian Dog

Is there meat on these knuckle bones? Why does your friend think she should boil them first?

SandyPuppy

To kill the germs. But obviously in this situation she should go back to boiling them since the raw ones hurt her dog!

Canadian Dog

I wouldn't give Molly knuckle or soup bones. A hunter gave me some frozen deer meat and a couple of packages were labeled 'soup bones'. I was pleasantly surprised when I thawed and opened the package to find 2 'bones' like this:



When the meat was gone, she left it and then I threw it out. There's not much point in giving a dog a bone with very little meat.

What is the injury you're referring to in the title of your thread?

Cesare Borgia

All bones are off limits for my dogs after Sam shredded her intestines up with a smoked bone, she was miserable and starving for 3 days before she could eat again after the bone splintered and cut her up inside, then after she could eat, it was only Cottage cheese mixed with instant potatoes for two weeks along with 2 pills a day and a culture powder in her food.

unless its a massive rawhide bone she cannot chew pieces off of, it's off limits, talk about learning the hard way.

SandyPuppy

There is a very small amount of meat on the bones yes.

I thought the whole point of giving bones was to keep their teeth clean.
The bloody diahrrea is the injury I was referring to.

GreatDaneMom

NO! the risk of it spintering isnt worth boiling it!! smoked bones are also not a good option. smoking them makes them brittle.

if shes having problems with the raw bones then just stop giving them. the bones just may be too rich for the GI system of the dog.