Rawhide Chews

A great way to keep a dog occupied & maintain healthy teeth & gums.

 

Question:

I have a healthy 3 1/2 year old female Great Dane.  She really likes rolled cowhide chew toys.  I let her have one about 5 days a week.  Someone at my wife’s work told my wife that cowhide chew toys are bad for dogs.  What’s the scoop?

 

Dr. Nichol:

You’ll hear old wives’ tales of all kinds. For example that feeding dogs sugar will give them worms or that allowing them to stick their heads out the window of a moving car will cause blindness. The truth is that sugar causes obesity, not worms and dogs leaning out of cars don’t go blind but do end up roadkill.

 

Rawhide chews, on the other hand, are one of the great inventions of the twentieth century. In our home we liken them to the pacifiers we gave our boys as babies. Without rawhides Peter Rabbit, the 10-month-old Border Collie nutball, would have swallowed Power Rangers and Pokemon instead. I’d have had to install a zipper in his gut just to avoid repeated incisions. Rawhides give chewing dogs a wholesome activity. I believe that it helps reduce shop lifting and gang violence. For many dogs an idle mouth is the devil’s workshop.

 

But here’s what I want to know: Are old wives the only people with misinformation? What about old husbands? The truth is that I’ve heard more nonsense from young single people than anybody else.