Can dogs have too much rawhide?

Nah, she’ll be fine.

Rawhide can get spendy! I remember being a poor grad student and my border collie pup had a $3.50/day habit (with restrictions!) and that was over 20 years ago!! None of my other dogs would go for nylabones etc. My current dog goes love his boiled wool toy – he can’t tear it apart. Here is a link to it – he did chew all the fins and tail off but the body is still whole. He sleeps with it, takes it on walks etc…
http://olivegreendog.com/blue-fish.html

Good Luck!

Too much rawhide can cause diarrhea and gastric upset. If she’s just chewing on a single rawhide during the day, that’s no problem. If you’re feeding her rawhide after rawhide after rawhide, you may have a problem. There’s also a small risk of choking and of intestinal obstruction (if she tends to swallow large chunks). Like everything in life, moderation is a good idea.

Dogs learned quickly in the wild that the best way to store food for your own use is to eat it right now and eat as much as you can. Hence, dogs will often eat as long as there is food available, even to the point where surgical emptying of the stomach is necessary. Thus you should never let your dog has as much as she wants.

And yes, as syz says, there are potential risks if your dog bites off huge chunks of rawhide and swallows them whole, or if you are giving her lots of rawhide.

Since pit bulls and puppies both love to chew, and pit bull puppies LOVE to chew, you might consider having several items available for chewing. Our pit bull and our American Bulldog both enjoy it when I tuck a bit of cheese or peanut butter inside a couple of giant kongs ( the biggest black ones). Nylabone makes a line of "Big Chew for Big Dogs" toys that last a long time also. ( a selection can be seen at http://www.bigtimedogtoys.net/ultra-tough-toys.html - we buy ours at PetSmart). We also have some heavy-duty knotted rope toys for pulling (bully breeds love to play tug of war). We also get the giant "knuckle bones" for when we will be home to supervise. They can spend several hours on one of these.

By rotating these toys we help keep the dogs from getting bored and trying to eat the furniture. We also have set up certain situations when a chew toy will be offered so the dogs know when to ask. Typically they get something after dinner and the last out of the day so they can settle down and start working on letting us sleep. They know this and are ready typically at 10 pm for their treat.

I never givemy dog rawhide, it’s to messy and he can’t seem to control himself when it gets small and tries to swallow it. I have subsituted it with some of those plastic type bones which he loves and they last 76896987 times longer. I have also tried some nylon bones as well. There are good alternatives.

@johnny I just bought one of those plastic bones and she LOVES it! thank god!

yeah they are great but make sure you get a quality one or they will break them down fast. my friend has had one for months which 3 dogs and its still holding up ha

I think the one i have is pretty good she’s had it for 4 months and it’s still intact! I just feel like some chewing is good for the teeth and gums but if i let her she would eat 5 or 6 rawhides a day!

Um, Olive, since your avatar matches the commercial site that you linked to, you may need to read the restrictions on spamming/self promotion in the Fluther guidelines.

Thanks Syz. I’ve flagged it and it should be removed. Still stickin’ with my sentiment that raw hide’s a pretty raw deal. Cheers!
Olive

we had to stop giving our dog rawhide because she got a piece stuck in her throat and choked on it. So the Kong ball was a good replacement. She’s been chewing on it for over a year and has yet to make a mark in it. And being a JRT, she is a power chewer, and has been known to completely destory an ordinary rubber toy in a matter of minutes.

First and foremost, I’d be worried about bowel obstruction. My experience with a beagle/Jack Russell who would eat whatever she could get ahold of made me wary of too many rawhides. She loved rawhides, like lovelovelove. However, I noticed that if we let her have more than two rawhides in a day, there would be like a rawhide strata in her poop. It was dry and crumbly, as well, which doesn’t generally lead to great intestinal health. Sorry if that’s gross, but them’s the facts.