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  1. #1
    Real Retriever alixb's Avatar
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    Bones & bacteria

    My girl Sunny had a some stomach issues last week. They gave her antibiotics & she seems fine now. The Vet though maybe the bacteria was coming from bones. She always gets bones & sometimes they lay around the house a few days. The other thing I do is I take out all the marrow (because it's so rich it gives her diarrhea ) and I stuff it with her regular food which is chunks of stewing meat. I then put it in the freezer & it gives her something to chew on for quite a while.
    So I usually re use the bones, re stuff them & put them in the freezer. Would you think that this is not a good practice? i keep thinking about dogs that bury their bones & it doesn't seem to be a problem. Any thoughts?
    The main reason I do this, is I find buying bully sticks all the time gets expensive

  2. #2
    Chief Pooper Scooper JenC's Avatar
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    I never even think about it. We get these big white knuckle bones and I never worry about bacteria. I had a bug go through the house, no idea how it happened.... It happens.

  3. #3
    Real Retriever
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    IMHO has nothing to do with bones....bacteria happens. If anything, I actually haven't experienced "any" stomach bacteria crud since switching all dogs to raw 3yrs ago, prior to that, yes, I would have bouts of it....strange I know.

    Just goes to show, it's not always food related.

  4. #4
    Senior Dog MightyThor's Avatar
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    We get Thor the big raw marrow bones from one of our local mobile abattoirs - we get them so cheap so we keep a deep freeze stocked with them. Whenever we take thor somewhere we want him to be calm and ignore other dogs (he thinks everywhere is a party) we bring one of the bones and he'll sit quietly under the table and gnaw away at the frozen marrow. When we get home he's not allowed to bring them inside (ew), and we toss them into the pasture. They then become retrieving toys. He's constantly finding and picking up old bones that are out in the field. He never chews them, just carries them around and brings them to us for tossing. He hasn't had any digestive issues from carrying around old marrow bones, and some of them sure look disgusting.
    Mighty Thor, "So Much Dog", born 1/6/2014
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  5. #5
    Senior Dog shellbell's Avatar
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    Part of our country property used to be a cow pasture. Cows have not been on it for a few years now, but Tux is a champ at finding random cow bones when we go hiking and carrying them around. Last year he found the carcass of a huge buck....it had been shot by a hunter down the road who tried to track it and failed. It somehow made it's way to our property and laid there I don't know how long. We were hiking and he found a deer leg which I took, then he went and got another one, so we went to investigate and found a buck with a nice rack which my dad actually had mounted. And for the next few months every time we went hiking he kept finding the same deer leg and carrying it around (I actually entered a pic in this month's photo contest). I thought whatever it is making him happy. Eventually the leg got super stinky and I got tired of it so I put it in the burn barrel.

  6. #6
    House Broken sandyut's Avatar
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    I would agree with others. Not likely caused by bacteria growing on the "in use" bones. The only issue we every had appeared immediately after Jack consumed a new bone and he was sick within half a day. We attributed it to the bone being bad from the get go. He is 10 and had consumed many bones, only one ever did this. Now that he is older he takes a while to get through them and they lay around for a couple weeks or more without issue. hope that helps.

  7. #7
    Best Friend Retriever Java's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MightyThor View Post
    Whenever we take thor somewhere we want him to be calm and ignore other dogs (he thinks everywhere is a party) we bring one of the bones and he'll sit quietly under the table and gnaw away at the frozen marrow.
    Not trying to take this thread off topic but gosh, I love how you describe Thor. I always want to giggle when I read about him and I'm not the giggling sort.

    I think I'll borrow your idea too. Minus the throwing of bones into a pasture.

  8. #8
    Senior Dog
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    i think vets that are not fans of raw feeding will always blame bacteria. if you take the bone away, after the dog is done munching for the day and refreeze, according to my husband the butcher, bacteria is not an issue. of course, he's not a vet, and we only feed one of ours, eli, the frenchie raw and he's only had the bones after one of the labs (boo hoo, only one left now) have finished eating all the good stuff. i think, but haven't tested it, that it's got too much fat and marrow ( i know it can be scraped out but what a waste) and he seems happy with the cleaned off bone.
    one of these days, maybe when the weather is nice again, i'll try one, outside and not let him have it more than 20 minutes at a time.

  9. #9
    Senior Dog windycanyon's Avatar
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    I know what scavengers Labs can be, so I add a good probiotic to my dogs' food every day. I can't remember the last time we had a stomach upset here.
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  10. #10
    Puppy
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    We too give Robbie raw marrow bones from the butcher...though we do slice some of the heavy meat and fat off...I used to boil them, but 3 butchers and the pet store told me to give them raw. My begger concern is that he bites SO hard that he will break a tooth! I also don't let him chew all that fat for more than a hour.

 



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