Good dental chew?

[Mustardfan]

What dental chews do people use? My dog has put on loads of weight since she started having a daily dental chew. Can anyone recommend one that cleans the teeth, but is healthy and doesn’t contain too many calories? My dog is raw fed so has wet soft food daily. I’ve been wondering if it would better for her to have one fried meal a day as I’ve heard dried food can help to keep teeth clean?

I would say you need to try and brush as well, although I realise some dogs won’t accept it being done. If you really can’t get them to accept brushing, using some of the gel type toothpastes (such as Logic Oral Gel) that cling and work to break down the bacteria and help to prevent plaque forming in the first place will help. A lot of so-called dental health chews actually contain sugars and are high in calories so ultimately not all that beneficial at all.

We use a variation of plaque off granules and daily portions of raw veg. Cabbage stalks and carrots.

I think raw "bits" are best for dental health. Just a mixture of whatever you feel comfortable with (some people choose not to feed weight bearing bones from big animals, so no beef knuckle bones or beef marrow bones, although personally these work really well for one of mine). But anything really: chicken leg quarters, duck necks, turkey necks, lamb necks. We use a variety of Nature's Menu stuff. Some stuff lasts longer than others. Healthy too!

My dog loves a Lily's Kitchen Woofbrush:
www.lilyskitchen.co.uk/for-dogs/food-for-dogs/shop-by-product-type/dental-chews/medium-woofbrush-dental-chew-multipack-DDTLM.html

My dog has and couple of antlers but she's not too fussed for them. I think she agrees they are just too hard. However she also has a couple of buffalo horn chunks (not the whole horn, I didn't like the look of the curly ones, just a chunk). These are so much softer than anters - they break down like little hairs ( I guess they are made of keratin too). Will post a pic of what they look like after chewing (and one of an antler so you can see the difference in hardness)

They are both about 2 years old! Antler much harder. I might get rid of the antler having read these messages but not the buffalo horn

We were told to give our pup kelp with his food and it will clean his teeth’

Thanks for all the replies. I made a typo in my original message, I didn’t mean to write ‘fried food’. That made me laugh when I saw that. I agree that brushing would be best, and I’m going to try that again, but she’s pretty intolerant. When she was a puppy I started training her to accept it,but didn’t persist, I regret that now.
So many suggestions. It’s hard to know what to try. I wonder if the plaque off powder actually works, is there any independent research on any of these things?

My friend'd dog was referred to a specialist dental vet who said exactly what
Tamingofthehamster is saying about antlers, also hard nylon bones and tennis balls.

Her general, excellent vet didn't know this. I prefer to listen to the specialist in this instance.

I'm a (ex) human dentist and dog owner, my younger Weimaraner goes crazy for raw bones and has immaculate teeth. The older one isn't too fussed and gets a small build up of tartar (which I clean off with my hand scaler) my bro has a smaller dog and uses dentastix. His dog is overweight and has dreadful teeth. Dentastix are so highly processed I can't understand how they are good. And an extra 200cal a day is a lot when you only weigh 20kg.

Bones and carrots is my advice.

Mine have raw carrot, salmon skin roll or a Lily's kitchen woofbrush

I find it much easier cleaning my dogs teeth with a battery operated toothbrush and really concentrating on the gum line.