Not a single one of my dogs has ever been remotely interested in a Nylabone, the hard nonedible ones, plain or flavoured, small or large. They find them THE most boring toy EVER. :lol:
If you ask any vet how many emergencies they have seen from Greenies vs other things dogs ingest regularly, they will tell you (and I am absolutely sure of this) that they will have had far more dogs go into surgery or die from problems eating the following: raw or cooked bone; socks; string; rawhide chews of all varieties; stones.
What makes me laugh in an ironic way is how most of the anti Greenie, anti rawhide etc posts are made on websites that advocate 'natural' feeding, meaning raw bones etc.
I am again questioning feeding raw chicken because Jaspar passed sharp pieces of neck bones the size of the end joint of my pinkie this week. This makes me truly wonder about the constant claims of raw advocates that 'the bone is pulverised in the gut' even when dogs do not thoroughly chew the bones down. Such a piece could easily have caused a blockage or lacerated his gut on the way through and cannot have been comfortable to pass through his rectum (indeed it wasn't, he passed some blood too clearly from these pieces of bone). There were about three pieces of bone of similar size. These are supposed to be the smallest, softest bones, too. :|
When he was about 6 months old, he was very sick one evening on and off, and at about 4am, just when I was ready to call the emergency vet, he vomited up about a third of a raw chicken wing **with the bone broken neatly into two sharp (and I mean SHARP!)pieces jutting at angles from the flesh**. This, say raw advocates, is impossible because raw bone is always thoroughly digested within hours (look at any raw site; read the Lonsdale, BARF etc books, they all tell you this is the absolute truth). Well, this was over 12 hours after he had eaten that wing and the bones looked little different from when they went in.
By contrast I have never seen so much as a small piece of whole Greenie pass through even when I was feeding the old recipe hard ones. (Boodas do come through in crumbled undigested
pieces often too so I wonder what would happen if a dog chewed off a large chunk of a Booda -- Lily would be the candidate for that as she eats them so fast, hence I don't give her Boodas. The boys are fine with them).
I think I will go back to the occasional marrow bone now, as far as raw bones are concerned. :?
The point of this is just to say, anything that can go undigested in some large form or can entangle the gut is potentially dangerous. Socks and bits of clothing, string and ribbon can be particularly lethal to dogs and cats. They are certainly far more dangerous than a Greenie -- 13 deaths with hundreds of millions eaten at this point don't concern me much. For that matter, more dogs are known to have died from eating raw beef diets than Greenies -- this is actually well documented in a study of greyhounds and thru several national depts of agriculture (because this pest also kills cattle and dogs are known to potentially be part of the life cycle). Raw advocates will come up with all sorts of reasons why such cases and studies are 'flawed' (curiously, while the papers are written by degreed, professional researchers, the advocates tend to have no background in science or how to judge the accuracy and throughness of study, but they are sure they are right). I do feed some raw -- but I take the claims of probably 85% of raw feeding advocates on the web and boards and lists with a large degree of scepticism.
But that is my own perspective. Everyone needs to use common sense, talk to your vet, weigh up the pros and cons of edible treats and particular diets. And be particularly cautious of passionate advocates or opponents of anything to do with diet. Those are the ones who, either way, tend to have a notion in their heads that is so strong that it means their minds are locked down to any opposing angle or piece of evidence, no matter how compelling. They just don't want to know.
I tend to like treats that are as close to natural as possible -- fish jerky, pizzle sticks, hooves, flat sheet rawhides, dried tripe, marrow bones. I do like Greenies and feel they are very good for dental health. Occasionally I offer boodas or dentastix or similar. I want to try Cathy's homemade dried yam recipe. We don't get a lot of the dog treats here that are available in the US but that's not a bad thing -- I'd just spend more money. Your mileage may vary.
