Can Dogs Eat Rib Bones? A Vet’s Opinion
Rib bones are the bones surrounding the thoracic cage. They are curved in shape and form a protective cage around your lungs and heart. These bones and the muscles between them expand and contract to aid breathing and protect your chest. These rib bones are considered a delicacy and are eaten all over the world, as you must have heard about braised beef ribs! However, the question is that can you feed Rib Bones to your dog?
No, it would be best if you did not give Rib Bones to your dog. While Rib Bones, may contain some nutritional elements, chewing on bones is suitable for your good. It would be best if you did NOT give raw or cooked rib bones to your dogs or mix them up in their daily meals for a variety of reasons. These bones pose a very serious health risk, which we shall talk about below.
Let’s dive in:
Benefits Of Rib Bones For Dogs
Raw bones have a lot of benefits for dogs, but their benefits do not outweigh the significant risks associated with feeding rib bones to your dogs. We will discuss some benefits bones provide as a part of your dog’s daily meals.
Bones are hard to structure and are excellent objects for your dogs to chew on and exercise their jaw muscles. Bones tend to act like a natural toothbrush for your dogs and help to clean their teeth when they chew on it! This helps remove the plaque on their teeth as well. The meat on the bones themselves has tons of benefits and nutrients, mainly protein! Which has enormous importance in the diet of your dog. Moreover, bones themselves contain a lot of different nutrients and minerals which are essential for your dog’s daily health. Some of these minerals are calcium and phosphorus.
How To Safely Give Rib Bones To Dogs
There are several factors to think about when incorporating ribs into your dog’s daily meals. Rib Bones must be treated right before being given to your dog. Selecting the correct type of bone is the most important thing to take care of when giving your dogs rib bones. You should choose an uncooked bone, which should be cleaned and dried thoroughly. This is the only hygienic way you should give food to your dogs. Moreover, ensure to choose a bone that is large, as this is very important; otherwise, it might get stuck in your dog’s throat or get lodged in the gastric tract.
Hence, these bones can cause serious choking hazards or other complications. The safest way to administer bones to your dogs is to give them the bones in front of you so you can be there in case something goes wrong. Keep a close eye on them as they chew a bone, and if you think they have chewed a small piece of the bone, we advise you to call your vet. Moreover, if your dog starts showing signs like vomiting, nausea, or lethargy after chewing on a bone for a while, you should not hesitate to call a vet, as they might have chewed on a bone, and it might have caused some trouble in their gastrointestinal tract.
Will Rib Bones Make A Dog Sick?
They will make your dog sick but not directly. On the one hand, you will be advised to give your dog raw bones and not uncooked ones since they are harder to break. However, raw bones may contain traces of some deadly bacteria like E coli, Listeria, or salmonella. These bacteria can cause diseases, which in some cases be life-threatening. Hence, raw bones pose a greater health risk than cooked bones, but cooked bones themselves are pretty deadly.
Bones, which are more significant than your dog’s throat, are safe options. However, the larger bones may as well break down and splinter as your try to chew on them. These splinters can become lodged in the gastrointestinal or esophagus part of your dog. This is incredibly painful for the dog and may require extensive surgery. Cooked bones will have more of this problem since they are dried out and are weaker, so your dog will break them easily. It is best to avoid bones at all costs. Bones outweigh the risk to rewards by a considerable margin. Hence peel off the rib meat from the bone to give to your dogs. Dogs like chewing, and they can get quite aggressive when they do so. Chewing on these bones for long periods in an aggressive manner may cause blisters or cuts in your dog’s mouth. Continuous chewing can cause the teeth of your canine to split as well. It is just as painful as it sounds. This could cause a severe infection of the teeth and can lead to a lot more hospital visits and uncomfortable situations. Moreover, as we discussed before, these splinters can also pierce the sensitive skin of your dog’s mouth and cause it a lot of pain and agony. Rib bones are notorious for containing high-fat levels; this means that you should not give rib bones to your dog since a high-fat content has been linked to a higher chance of having pancreatitis among dogs. These are some of the main reasons you must avoid giving your dog rib bones. There are a lot of healthier alternatives to rib bones that you can give to your dog.
Vet’s Summary
All in all, we must advise you to stay away from Rib Bones since they are a good source of calcium and phosphorus, but they can be deadly for your pooch to chew on. Rib bones also naturally act as a toothbrush for your dogs, removing plaques. However, if you do plan on giving Rib bones to your dog, make sure you do it under your own observation, and the rib bone should be big enough. Make sure to clean the uncooked raw bone to clean it of any bacterial traces. Giving cooked bones to your dog isn’t a solution since they are weak and can splinter off easily. These splinters are deadly. Moreover, make sure to incorporate probiotics into your dogs. They are essential for your dog’s digestive health. Probiotics help digest and help absorption with medicines, nutrients, and minerals for dogs. Probiotics are also crucial for the gut health of your dogs. Ensure to use probiotics as per the guidance of your veterinary doctor.
Videos To Watch
If you are wondering what related foods are good to give your dog, watch this:
And if you want to know that cooked rib bones are good for dogs or not, watch this:
