The Staffordshire Bull Terrier had been brought to the surgery just after Easter weekend. He was vomiting up blood and small shards of broken bone, crying and straining. When my colleague examined his abdomen he screamed in pain and she could feel a very hard, concrete-like mass in his rectum. This poor dog had been fed the left-over from Easter Sunday lunch which was basically COOKED LAMB BONE. Now the crunched up pieces of bone had impacted into a hard mass in his rectum.
He was admitted and anaesthetised. Xrays of his abdomen revealed lots of small pieces of bone in his stomach and a 'concreted' mass of bone in his rectum. He was put on intravenous fluid and given a soapy enema that took 1.5 hours to fully soften the faeces and allow it's removal. My colleague was really worried about the damge to the rectum from the sharp pieces of bone and concerned that it may perforate and lead to an infection of the abdomen. Thankfully this didn't happen. Over the next few days the small pieces of bone in the stomach moved through and the discomfort was controlled with pain medication. Happily the Staffi made a full recovery.
HE WAS LUCKY.
Perforation of gut by sharp pieces of bone can happen and can result in death. Pieces of bone can become stuck at any point along the gastrointestinal tract, causing inflammation and pain, possible obstruction and possible perforation. Obstruction of the gastrointestinal tract causes severe debilitation and must be corrected surgically. This is of course a horrible experience for the dog, distressing for the owner and also expensive.
So, please DON'T feed your dog BONES of ANY description. Lets PREVENT problems like this from happening in the first place.
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3 comments:
wow Michelle this is all so fascinating! i have 4 dogs all of which love having left over bones! I will now be instructing my parents not to give them any more bones. Thanks you you have probably saved us a fortune in vets bills!
Sorry, but this is poor misguided advice.
COOKED BONES are dangerous and to a lesser degree raw bone without any meat.
Nature has catered for the consumption of bones (needed to maintain optimal health of canines)by surrounding them with flesh, which, aided by saliva, ensures a smooth passage to the stomach.
Having fed raw for almost 9 years and having up to 21 dogs at a time I have NEVER had any such incident.
Dont't Cook Bones
Don't Give Dry Bones
Give Bones As Nature Provides
If your dog is the sort of dog that strips the meat from a bone, feed the bone in a Little Bigger than Bite size pieces that they have to crunch to eat. This prevents the striping of the meat, but still gives the necessary chewing and Natural Teeth cleaning function of meaty bones.
I see that this original post was over 3 years ago, so hopefully sense has prevailed and natural feeding and the understanding that domestic canines are not any different internally to their wild ancestors. It takes 100,000 years to bring about any evolutionary change based on diet and as processed diets have only been around for approx 50 years there's an awful long way to go before canines digestive systems change to be able to eat processed foods without all of the illness they cause.... Now that's something that is far more common place than any problem/s caused by eating even dry bones...
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