Eating marrow bones

Stanislaw posted a picture recently of him eating a marrow bone and I asked about it. The reply was so interesting that I'm copying it here from the comments section of my blog, where he explained about his human's feeding of these bones. You might like to pop over to his post to see the pictures. Here's what he told me:

My marrow bone was a 2.5-inch tube (about) filled with marrow and with meat attached. Mom picks bones that are too large for us to swallow, too thick for us to break bits from, small enough for us to paw and play with, and bones that have a moderate amount of marrow inside (some of HUGE amounts).

We've never seen bones sliced lengthwise. I'd imagine that would make it too easy to eat the marrow and would take away the challenge. Marrow is so rich that too much too fast, and too much in general, can really upset your tummy. Normally we get a marrow bone and are allowed 1/2 of it. Then it goes into a baggy in the fridge and is saved for the next day.

Yes, we're wearing our snoods to keep our ears out of our food. Our ears are so long with such thick, curly fur that they can get really gross really fast when we're eating our meals!

Hope that answers your questions! Let me know if you ever get to enjoy a juicy marrow bone!

a pet detective

After moderating a reply about raw feeding of dogs, by Bonnie Hale, I had to track it back through my blog posts to find which post she had commented on. It was my post on suitable raw meats for dogs, on December 8 2007. (And I'm proud of myself for having figured out how to extend my list of 'recent comments' to seven instead of the previous five, so I could find her comment.)

It was well worth the hunt for Bonnie Hale's comment, because when I went across to her blog I discovered she is a pet detective! She specialises in locating lost pets.

She doesn't post often, but when she does it's very interesting.

persuading a dog to eat raw fish

The other night we had another try at broadening Penny's raw feeding diet to include fish.

What was this weird stuff her bowl? Hmm...she carried it over to her eating mat to examine it.

And then the human tried to convince her it was fun...it would be a good reward for obedience...it was worth guarding from food-thieves.




No luck.

In desperation, determined not to waste it, the human popped it into a saucepan with some hot water, lightly cooked it, and, hey presto! It must have tasted good.

Penny and the little fishies in her food

Penny won't eat much fish, as I've mentioned previously, although we try to get her used to it. The other day I sneaked some whitebait into her bowl, mixing them in with a raw egg - which she loves.

It looked as if the experiment was a success. She worked busily at her bowl, making sounds that seemed to indicate enjoyment. And then, when she looked up for a rest...there they were, a nice collection of little fishies, carefully licked clean of the egg.




Maybe she should have been introduced to fish early in life, like these little cane corso puppies, only five weeks old and dealing with their first big Indian mackerel.

feeding a dog a raw diet that includes fish

Penny found something weird in her food bowl this evening. While her humans were eating their fish dinners, Penny was busy at her bowl long enough for them to think she was enjoying her meal of rice, beef leftovers and sardines. But she wasn't, because there was a strange creature staring at her.

It smelled good, though. So she decided to get it out of the bowl and roll on it. Her humans all leapt up from the table, yelling, 'No!'

Hmm... What to do with it?



She carried it over to her eating mat to think about it, but one of the humans' hands came sneaking over her shoulder to steal it away (and put it in the rubbish bin), so she had to crouch really, really low to guard it.



Even though she studied it carefully from different angles, it still didn't look like something a respectable dog would eat.




In the end, she decided it wasn't worth the trouble and the humans stole it away. The house rule is, 'Eat it if it's in your bowl, because you won't get anything else.' So all she got tonight was some left-over rice and a teensy piece of old cooked beef.

The bad news is, another piece of fish is going to appear in her bowl tomorrow.
The good news is, there'll be nice things mixed in with it, to make it less obvious.
The even better news is that the next bit won't have eyes.

If only she could be like Noah and family, and enjoy a fish meal properly! I belong to the Yahoo rawfeeding group and I'm convinced Penny will benefit from more oily fish in her diet.

There's an interesting discussion about fish in a dog's diet at Dogster.