How do you teach a "gulper" to eat small raw bones safely? ALL advice gratefully received ....

[loveyouradvice]

I've recently changed to raw food and the wee fella is loving it.

Next step, in a week or two, is trying him on raw bones - he's a dachshund so small bones like ducks' necks and lamb ribs are recommended.... THIS IS NEW TO ME - Help!

I've only ever fed him the occasional venison bone which he happily knaws on ... but little bones that he is meant to eat in their entirety? How do I do that?

I've mental images of him just swallowing great chunks down or me ending up in the vets with him suffering.... Yes, melodramatic but I don't feel equipped to teach him to eat a bone sensibly, especially knowing he gulps his food down so isn't a dainty eater! (I have recently started using slow feeding bowls which he enjoys)

So yes please any and all advice welcome... and please be gentle! Feeling nervous...

They just need to be big enough that he has to chew and can’t swallow them whole to start with.

Which shouldn’t be too hard with a dachshund?

Great.... I'll just plunge in ... feeling nervous.... and visions of tussling with him when he's had too much!!

Advice from others? Or am I just getting my Knickers in a twist about nowt.....

Hi I have just got a puppy & am thinking about putting him on a raw diet. Can you help give me some advice? Or examples of what a raw diet actually looks like? Thx

If it is the first time with bones I would hold onto them while they eat one end. With puppies I would hold onto the chicken wings.

Alternatively you could give him minced bone in a complete food

I wouldn’t feed raw bones to a gulper.
I have fed raw before and my girl still gets raw bones occasionally but she’s a sensible eater/chewer.
Complete raw minces contain bone anyway, I’d just feed that.

They just need to be big enough that he has to chew and can’t swallow them whole to start with
Which shouldn’t be too hard with a dachshund?
It’s not just size but density too though, too hard a bone, weight bearing beef bones for example, can fracture teeth.

You don't need to feed raw bones if you don't want to - just feed a complete raw diet in nugget form or mince instead.

Personally I wouldn't feed raw bones to a gulper unless they were big enough not to cause any damage. Mine is a gulper and I know that swallowing chunks of raw bone would just cause him to vomit in the middle of the night speaks from bitter experience

I absolutely wouldn’t feed raw bones to a ‘gulper’. It’s just asking for serious trouble, and very large vet bills. Normal dog food is a much safer option.

Small Dog's a gulper (more an inhaler actually) and he gets chicken necks, chicken wings and lamb breast bones (with meat). They're too big for him to gulp.

Mostly, though, he gets complete minced mixes because it's difficult to feed him the right mixture of home-mixed chunks. Paleo Ridge is good. I feed him on a large plastic plate and spread the food around so it takes him more than five seconds to swallow it.

Thatlibrary that sounds great.... what happens? He chews them? Crunches? How long? Do you take them back or just let him finish them off??

I often feed frozen or partially frozen.

Dutiful I took the easy route - buying complete ... so boxes of frozen food already mixed so contain 80% meat 10% bone 10% offal (of which half is liver)... Just defrost it overnight in the fridge and feed twice a day. Smeared on plate as Thatlibrary suggests

Stefs Pet Pantry (you can find online) are really helpful and worth a phone call - I've decided to try mine on several different types and see which he and I like best.

Advice is definitely to build up to 5 different protein types in a week eg lamb beef duck chicken fish. And to feed oily fish (tin of sardines!) and raw egg once or twice a week.

There are lots of puppy mixes out there and the advice varies but is always to just add one protein at a time until you see that all are okay for your dog.

loveyouradvice, he crunches chicken necks and wings until they're small enough to swallow. Chickens are pretty immature when they're slaughtered and their bones are soft. He seems to digest them well, although too much bone makes his poos really hard and crumbly.

The ribs, he can't crunch but he spend a long time chewing the meat off them. He sometimes gets beef ribs from Morrisons too, which are even bigger and have a lot of meat on them, but they've been banned recently because he takes them out through the cat flap and buries them for a few hours then brings them back with a garnish of soil and eats them on the landing carpet.

You mentioned oily fish - if you buy from Durham Animal Foods they sell 1kg of raw sprats for £3.69. He gets one sprat plus the raw mince twice a day. He doesn't like them as much as meat but he eats them.

Loving the buried beef ribs on the landing ... Trying to train our wee fella to only eat bones in certain places but not very successfully.

Looking forward to trying some chicken - I hadn't thought of them being soft and immature and that makes a lot of sense!