Monday, May 27, 2013

Raw Bones

It's a rainy morning so I thought I'd give the dogs a treat: raw, frozen marrow bones (cuts of beef femur).

If you've had your coffee or are paying attention, you'll see FOUR dogs in the video. The little white dog is Skeeter, Anne's JRT bitch. I'm watching Skeeter for a week while she is driving to Utah to pick up a new puppy, a BC (she's gone over to the dark side at last).

Skeeter is a dominant little bitch...and so is Mimi. If they were to ever meet face to face, the particle-anti-particle implosion would annihilate the universe. So one of them is always in a crate. It's not as bad as it sounds. HellBeast quickly taught Skeeter that cats are not to be fucked with, and she gets along great with Azza and Harry. It's fairly simple to switch them out every couple of hours.

But you'll notice that all three bitches are in crates in the video for the bone treat. Yep, that's what you have to do when you have a pack of guardy, aggressive dogs. Even if it wasn't raining, I couldn't put them outside. A raw bone is a resource of tremendous value. A dog with guarding issues never gets the concept of "bird in the hand". Having a crate-trained dog is a tremendously useful thing--I never understand it when people resist using a crate. There was in fact a woman in Azza's class who said her dog, a husky puppy, ate things when left alone (pillows, remotes, etc.). The solution is so simple: use a damned crate or confine the dog to one room. But oh no, she couldn't do that. It would be mean. FFS. It's a story I heard often when teaching the obedience classes in Dhahran. As the saying goes, you get the dog you deserve.

I pulled out the dogs' bedding and replaced it with packing paper (Azza already had paper in her crate). The bones are messy, bits of fat and bloody connective tissue and slobber get spread around, so when the dogs are done I'll simply roll the paper up and toss it. Easy clean up!

Raw bones are good for dogs. (I don't want to get into an argument on diet. Too many anecdotes, too little science. But bones = good no matter where you sit on the diet fence--raw, homemade, high protein, commercial, cheap, expensive.) Most decent grocery stores sell femur cuts for this purpose. You can give the bone directly from the freezer. I usually take the bones away after about 30 minutes, refreeze them, and give them again on another day.

2 comments:

Rover Mom said...

Hailey has paper in her car crate - for car sickness - way easier to clean up!

lilspotteddog said...

Totally. Paper is cheap and I can toss the dirty remnants in the organic waste recycling bin (it isn't clean enough for the paper recycle bin).