Thank you for your comment and for taking the time to visit my site. The philosophies of BARF are so important to keep writing about on the internet to help inform those who are interested. I have the opportunity to speak with people in person every day about the benefits of a raw diet. I always encourage people to do research and have often recomended your site as a place to go for a wealth of accurate information.

Best regards,
Hilary

It’s another one of those raw food myths… raw bones are a splintering danger.
Bones when cooked become more brittle and fragile. For low density bones, such as chicken bones, this makes them prone to splintering, hence the old wisdom, never feed a dog a chicken bone. But raw, they are no more dangerous than a stick in your back yard.
One thing you never hear of plaguing wolves is splintery bones - they don’t cook them.

All the same, there are some raw feeding horror stories you encounter sometimes with bones lodged in the gut, and there is a reason for it.
Some dogs, used as they are, to pre-ground, easy to swallow kibble and dog-food, don’t chew. They never learned, and some of them never do.
When first switching a dog over to a raw diet, it is important to watch them eat. Make sure they are chewing their food properly, not just swallowing it down whole, especially if there are sharp, pre-cut edges as you will find on beef ribs and the like. If it is a problem, you might try feeding in pieces too large for them to simply swallow (a sheep’s head for example), or just holding the meat and letting them chew it out of your hand.
If your dog is a gulper, you may have to grind, but in so doing you lose one of the big benefits of raw - clean teeth. Chewing on the bones is great for their teeth and gums, so I wouldn’t be too quick to give up on feeding whole. There is nothing like watching a dog eat food like they are meant to. Crunch, crunch crunch!