So I was debating for a while if I wanted to post about this, because I saw it only as my opinion and I don't want to seem like it's all around wrong to give your dog rawhides, but this
lengthy article has made me change my mind and post about it, because I feel like you can feed your dog whatever you please, but many people don't know about the dangers of rawhide so it's at least worth bringing up.
I used to give Mason rawhides, but my friend Shannon talked about her corgi, Hiro, swallowed one whole once and almost choked. After this I started hearing online about how they have caused intestinal blockage quite a few times. At this point I stopped buying rawhides, and switched to knee bones and bully sticks, or just filling up a Kong.
I don't really like to share or talk about nasty food facts, but this is one worth mentioning from the article;
"Other poisonous residues that may show up in rawhide include arsenic and formaldehyde. Even dog skin is a possibility. An ongoing investigation of the fur trade by Humane Society International, an arm of the HSUS, resulted in this information, as listed on their website: “In a particularly grisly twist, the skins of brutally slaughtered dogs in Thailand are mixed with other bits of skin to produce rawhide chew toys for pet dogs. Manufacturers told investigators that these chew toys are regularly exported to and sold in U.S. stores.” "And as I stated before, on top of that there's the risk for intestinal blockage. Rawhides don't digest like normal food, and if one has been swallowed whole or in large pieces it can possibly create a cause for surgery.
Obviously they're not an end-all-be-all you're dog's gonna die danger, but it's something I totally wasn't aware of.
I wanted to avoid giving Didgi raw hides, but Ali suggested it as something to keep him busy since he discovered how to take out a frozen kong in less than 20 minutes. Honestly, I don't think he even likes them, and I usually have to put peanut butter on them or put little pieces of cheese down in the cracks for him to even care about it. For some reason, I was never fully sold on them, and so reading that was really helpful. Just earlier today, I bought him a big ole cow joint bone from Whole Foods that he LOVES, even though it makes our house smell like beef. I think I finally found something he actually likes enough to spend the time trying to demolish. The vegetarian part of me hates it, but having something that he enjoys so much makes it worth it.
ReplyDeleteYeah or just raw bones are good, but even those need supervision since they MAY splinter. Rawhides are just gross...and personally I don't think they work much better at keeping them busy because once they get them covered in spit and squishynast they swallow em...which is soooo grosssss hahahahah eughh. And ya!!! Joint bones are good, hollywood feed sells cheap knee caps too.
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