I avoid rawhides and greenies for the reasons you mention. Usually they won't cause any harm, but there are so many other things that don't have the known risk, i don't find it necessary to use them. For chewing exercise, zack loves things like ropes and rubber and heavy cloth. He chews those to his heart's content and always has. He especially likes if there is something that squeaks involved. I don't use food for chewing exercise but i did when he was younger. I stopped because he found those more tasty than his kibble so he would just chew on them and try to get pieces off to swallow rather than eat his kibble.
I do give him a carrot stick a day and he consumes those very slowly, over 24 hours, he will gradually eat one up, but he likes gnawing on them. What i used to give him to chew before i stopped using food chews were bully sticks (do you know what those are? icon_whistling), dental chews, edible nylabones (lamb and rice), booda bones, hooves, and bleached white dry femur bones. He loved those. someone at the pet store said puppies could break their teeth on those white bleached bones, and when i heard the cracking noise he made while chewing them, i put them away.
something that i got when i first got Zack that was useful was a soft fabric covered bag containing rice (i think). I would heat it in the microwave for 2 or 3 minutes and it would stay warm for hours, i'd put it in his crate when i went to bed at night.
About dog food, read Laura Lang's page on the subject.
http://www.roycroftcavaliers.com/manualfeeding.htm
I have heard from numerous sources whose beliefs make sense to me that regular kibble is more healthy for puppies than puppy food--puppies eat the same diet as adults by nature, and puppy food, some say, lacks the right balance for their proper development, causing their bones to grow at a faster rate than other tissue, with possible musculo-skeletal health problems possibly resulting.
Many people on these forums, people who care a lot about what they are feeding their dogs, feed Royal Canin kibble. I've fed it to Zack at different times. The kibble i settled on for a while was California Natural Lamb and Rice, he used to eat that regularly. Then, i tried Innova Evo and he seemed to like that much better than all the other kibbles, so for many months i've been feeding him Innova Evo. It's different from the other kibbles, it's got almost twice the protein and has no grain, and there are some who believe this is more healthy for a dog, having some of the health benefits of a raw diet. As you noticed, there are so many choices, and many of them are of high quality.
I would recommend staying away from dog foods whose ingredients are not fit for human consumption. I will look for that on a bag of food or treats. A certain level of dog food, less desirable imo, uses meat ingredients that are the rejects from human meat processing, sick or toxic animals, :yuk: I think that Science Diet and Eukanuba are in this category
If you enjoy cooking or have a knack for it, you can combine home cooking with the kibble, you will find lots of info on that subject on cavaliertalk.
back on the subject of toys, there are so many wonderful choices. One of Zack's first favorite toys were the Doctor Noys Toys, which are very sturdy little furry cloth animals, small for a puppy's mouth, with little squeakers in them. They come with extra squeakers in case your dog wears out the squeaker, they have velcro opening where you can replace a dead squeaker.
how fun to be getting ready for a puppy!