Them bones, them bones

Feeling icky (photo: Pexels)

Ugh I feel like totally wrecked this evening. You've heard that saying yeah? "Sick as a Dog"? Well that was me sick as the proverbial dog even though I'm actually a real dog. Why? Because in my owners infinite wisdom they decided to buy me a big raw knuckle bone from the butchers to chew on. Wow, it was delish. I loved it. I gnawed and chewed away for well over an hour, um could actually even have been two. I just couldn't leave it alone.

Eventually though, I did get a little tired of the thing and then my mate Kev gave me my tea in order to get me to leave the bone. But really I was happy to leave the thing by now as I was feeling maybe a little nauseous. But tea, food, I'm a dog I couldn't possibly turn down my tea so I ate it, though I did leave some. The Missus spotted that I'd left some of my tea but Kev said well he's eaten quite a lot of that bone so its like a meal in itself.

I decided to retire to my bed while they sat eating their tea as I really wasn't feeling too good at all by now. Oh no, here it comes..... ugh bleck I brought the whole lot back. The Missus had spotted the signs, me licking my lips, sitting up, looking peaky so Kev was ready with his plastic tray to catch it, and luckily he did manage to get most of it. Oh my god I feel so ill, I so wish I had never seen the skanky bone.

"Somewhere in the back of my mind" said the Missus, "I knew raw bones were bad. I seem to recall giving bones to other dogs we've had and saying we won't give them bones any more they make them have the runs". She then took to Google, I presume looking to see if you are actually meant to give bones to dogs even though a dog is synonymous with chewing a bone. In the meantime I just know I'm going to throw up again before the night is out.

So anyway she read that cooked bones are bad but she already knew that. They get brittle and could cut our insides, choke us and all sorts. Raw bones not so bad but..........here's a scientific bit of news. Dogs brought up on a diet of raw meat and bones apparently have stomach acid pretty much as strong as battery acid. They can digest bones and stuff at a far faster rate than some poor little commercially fed pooch like me. Those of us brought up on a diet of dried dog food have much weaker acid. We can't digest bones, gristle and meat at the same rate and so it kind of sits there or in my case it comes back to haunt me. This is when things can go badly wrong. Since we can't digest at a fast enough rate, some of that bone we've eaten can be compacted in our intestines causing big problems.

So from my own experience of this and the Missus's findings on that there interweb I'd suggest steering clear of bones altogether as I'm thinking they're bad news for us softie's. Though she also read that dogs fed on dried food like me show signs of gum disease as young as three years old. That's bad isn't it. Apparently my predecessors who lived with my new owners got bad teeth. One of them had to have half his teeth removed all at once (that was 22 teeth in all) and one of the others had some of her teeth removed quite a few years ago. So looks like we can't win guys unless we are brought up from puppyhood on a proper fresh meat and bone diet. We either get sick eating these pesky bones but have clean teeth, or we stick with the dried food stuff and end up losing half our bloody gnashers. It's not good is it.

Anyway, in the meantime I was sick again after I had a drink of water. So I'm going to lie on my sick bed for the rest of the night and hopefully will feel better tomorrow. In the meantime the Missus is now wringing her hands, and fretting that I'm now seriously ill. I am!

Next time might I suggest Missus that you do your interweb research first before giving me these things, like you did with the peanut butter when you interrogated Aldi to ensure that the peanut butter you were about to put in my Kong definitely did NOT contain Xylitol - another death threat to us poor canines. It's an artificial sweetener and tends to be in foods that are sold as sugar free. So do tell your owners to watch out for that one as it is more toxic than the highest of coco content chocolate to us doggies.

It sure is a scary place out there.

Woof for now Lou xx 🐕