Q My husband insists on giving chicken bones, pork bones and steak bones to our 100-pound Lab mix. I know that this is bad for the dog, but the dog loves them, and my husband can see no reason why he should not give them.
A The issue with cooked bones is that they can be brittle. If the dog swallows a shard the wrong way, it can pierce the stomach wall or throat.
I have read this even in dog-care books dating to the 1920s, so dog keepers have known this for a long time. The fact that your dog eats them with no problem is just luck -- the same way that I know people in their 90s who have smoked cigarettes all their adult life and have no cancer.
Feeding raw bones to a dog is controversial, as well. Raw bones will not splinter like cooked ones, but they can harbor salmonella bacteria. However, I do know many people who give their dogs raw chicken wings to eat, and the dogs chew them up and swallow them bones and all, and all is well. Go figure.
I do not give my dogs bones at all -- raw or cooked. There are plenty of other things to feed a dog or to allow it to chew on. Why take a chance?
Dog loves to bark Q Our 3-year-old mini poodle is perfect in every way except, when we go for a walk, he feels the need to bark at every single passing car. We have tried reprimanding him and shaking a can full of coins to distract him, but nothing works. Can you offer another suggestion?
A This is what we call a self-rewarding behavior. When the dog sees the car coming, he barks at it, and then it goes away -- so he feels he has done something good. He likely thinks that the reprimanding of him that you do is you joining in on the fun of yelling at the car to make it go away.
If you could sit on a chair on the side of a busy road with him and read a magazine for a few hours every day for a week, and just ignore him as he barks at each of the many passing cars, then eventually he would get bored with the whole idea and pay the cars no mind.
