The Trendy Dog Chew That’s an Extreme Choking Hazard
Gracie Smith
By Dr. Becker
This is the second half of my two-part video on the dos and don’ts of chews and bones for your dog. In part one I discussed how to select appropriate bones or chews for your dog, the best bones for scarfers and aggressive chewers, the various types and sizes of raw bones, and recreational vs. edible bones.
In today’s video I’ll be discussing the various types of dog chews on the market.
It seems over the last 100 years or so, human food manufacturers have figured out how to market almost all leftover animal body parts to the dog treat industry, from traditional beef rawhides to the now-popular pizzles, tracheas and flossies. All types of skin, tendons, ligaments and other soft tissue and cartilaginous body parts are made into dog chews.
Rawhide Chews: There's Nothing "Raw" About Them
Let’s start by taking a look at the oldest chew on the market, the old-fashioned rawhide. The name “rawhide” is technically incorrect. A more accurate name would be processed-hide, because the skin isn’t raw at all. But the term “rawhide” has stuck.
Rawhide dog chews are processed skin, and although some are safer than others, for example, the organic variety, rawhides carry a higher choking risk than other types of recreational chews due to their consistency. Rawhide chews start out hard, but as your dog works the chew it becomes softer, and eventually he can unknot the knots on each end and the chew takes on the consistency of a slimy piece of taffy or bubble gum. And by that time your dog cannot stop working it -- it becomes almost addictive.
At this point, there’s no longer any dental benefit to the chew because it has turned soft and gooey, and in fact, it has become a choking and intestinal obstruction hazard. Once your dog has worked a rawhide chew until it is soft, I recommend you take it away, set it aside, and let it harden back up before offering it again.
Rawhides come in all shapes and sizes, from tiny twists to giant knotted bones. They also come all natural, bleached (which is pure white), or basted. Rawhides that are basted or flavored have been treated with dye, coloring, and probably preservatives. If you opt to offer rawhides to your dog, you should supervise chewing sessions.
You should also make sure the product comes from U.S. (or other safe countries of origin, such as Canada or New Zealand) animals, which will mean they will cost about four times as much as a bulk, non-U.S. rawhide chew. It should be manufactured in the U.S. and should not contain added coloring, artificial flavorings or preservatives – so make sure to read package labels.
If you have an aggressive chewer, get the biggest all-natural rawhide available. Rawhide chews need to be larger than the size of your dog’s head, and once the rawhide has been chewed down to about half its original size, you should consider discarding it and getting a new one. This means you’ll be wasting about half of every chew, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Better to toss out the remaining rawhide than end up at the emergency veterinary clinic because your dog has an intestinal obstruction.
Trending Now: Tendon Chews
Tendon chews have become very popular in the last several years. These chews are long and slender, and dogs love them. Like rawhides, these types of chew can also become very soft and pliable as your dog works on them over time. Because they are ropey, and some of them are very small, long and thin, they present a significant choking risk for most dogs. The nice thing about these chews is they come from a variety of different animal sources, but the small ones are risky for even the tiniest dog.
You can find tendon chews in small, medium and extra-long sizes. As with rawhides, I recommend buying these chews from stores with good product turnover. The chews should be labeled as to their origin and ingredients, and I recommend getting the very long ones so that when your dog works them down you can discard them rather than risk your dog swallowing the last of them whole. If you don’t know what your dog might do with the remaining remnants of a chew – whether she’ll keep chewing as the piece gets smaller, or she’ll decide to swallow it whole – you should take it away when it gets to that size.
Pizzles: Private Parts
Pizzles, or penises (I’m showing a pig penis in this video), can be very small and I don’t allow even my smallest dog, a 10-pound Dachshund, to chew something that small. It’s just too risky. I know him well enough that if I gave him a pig pizzle and then tried to take it back after he whittled it down, he’d play “Catch me if you can.” I’d never catch him and while he was running from me, he’d be chewing and swallowing what was left of the thing. So even for my gentle chewers, I buy very long tendons and when they wear them down, I give a “Drop It” command (a very important command in my house!), then I pick them up, toss them in the trash, and offer them a new chew the next time around.
As a good point of reference, I recommend you remove any chew product once you can’t see it sticking out two inches on either side of your dog’s mouth. If you see your dog chewing away and you can’t see much or any of the product sticking out of her mouth, there’s significant risk she could choke or swallow the remainder whole and cause an obstruction in her GI tract. It’s important to try to get that small piece away from her so you can throw it away.
Keep Reading: HERE