Dogs and Bones 

Dogs love bones. 

All of my Dobermans have had bones to complement their diets.

Not only are they good for them physically, with benefits from clean teeth to added nutrients but mentally too. It keeps them occupied for extended periods and they have to use their brains to work out how to clean and eat the bones, what angles to hold them at and whether to use a paw to hold them (or even to recruit their humans to help ) ! Bones also stop your dog from getting hungry as they are very filling. 

So what sort of bones to give ?

1/ ALWAYS ALWAYS RAW. Even if the bones a crushed there are normally no really sharp edges or shards.

2/ Make sure the bones are knuckle bones or marrow bones and as a general rule they should be around  the size of your dogs head, for a Doberman that’s a big bone that they can’t normally crush, but a bone they can scrape at to consume.  

Marrow bones are ok smaller because even a Doberman can’t (normally ) crush a marrow bone

What not to give. 

Cooked bones. NEVER GIVE THESE TO YOUR DOG. It’s just not worth the risk .

Hide chews. Hide is a by product of the leather industry and from what i understand contains chemicals. They can also be dangerous to dogs by causing choking.

Yak milk bones. Ok many people really like these... but powerful dogs can actually break/ crush them (Joey did) and it's my opinion he could’ve broken a tooth. just my opinion but they are too hard. I feel the same way about Antlers. These type of products could well be ok for dogs that don’t try to crush them and are happy to just chew. 

Downsides of giving Bones.

Mess

Indoors they are messy. If you’ve ever watched ‘Dexter’ on television, the preparation for keeping your carpet clean resembles Dexter getting ready to dismember a body! old sheets everywhere…and if your dog is really clever will still find a bit of carpet to eat it on just to annoy you. 

Resource Guarding Issues. 

Bones are very high value to dogs and issues can occur. I’ve never had any issues, to the extent that our Dobermans have always ‘shared’ their bones with us . This can be from reversing their backsides into us while they eat it to plonking the lovely tasty raw bone on our laps in case we can find a better way of getting the marrow out for them.

I will discuss my whole approach to how to avoid resource guarding bones in another blog.

Thanks for reading !