THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

Well, Tender at the Bone is admittedly the title of a book about food (if you love food and good writing as much as I do, this is a fantastic book by food critic Ruth Reichl), but I borrowed the phrase to continue our discussion about dental health and chewing on bones. If you haven’t followed it yet, read the comments from my A Fully Functional Tooth? post, they add lots of meat to the conversation (sorry).

A few readers asked for more photos from Africa, so I thought I’d combine topics and send some more pictures of our time with the pack of African Wild Dogs.

Relevant to dental health, here’s a photo of the mouth of “Jones,” the 4 year old breeding male who was darted and radio collared when we were there watching. What I think is interesting is how good some teeth look (keeping in mind the comment made earlier reminding us that white, clean teeth are not necessarily healthy teeth) and how bad the 2 problem teeth are. The bright red area on the lower gum, by the way, was probably caused by either the act of predation that morning or from ingesting part of the kill, and was only temporary.

But, look at the lower canine and upper incisor. Ouch. I’ll have to ask Dr. McNutt how common it is to see a set of teeth like that, but I’d guess it’s not uncommon at all. There is a high rate of injury (and death) in African Wild Dogs, either from lions or from injuries received while taking down prey. What happened to these particular teeth? Who knows… could be from chewing on bones, or from strikes by horns of ungulates?

In case the photo above is a little bit more intimate than you want to get with a AWD, here’s a portrait showing off their huge, gorgeous, cartoon animal ears.

And here’s a photo of the pups just seconds after an adult had walked in and regurgitated for them. It all happened behind the bush, and was over, from start to finish, in about 4-5 seconds, but you can see one of the pups licking his lips, apparently having been one of the lucky ones and getting his share of the food.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Will is back to chewing on his stuffed Kong in the morning, and I haven’t gone out to find just the right real bone to give to him and Lassie. Admittedly, although I have decided to let them eat carefully selected bones for a short time, I haven’t yet gone looking for them.

It was sweltering hot and humid last night (okay, all is relative: hot for here at this time of year). Mostly it was humid without a breath of fresh air. It’s a bit better today, and tomorrow it will be better still. Can’t wait for the nights to get cool again so I can snuggle under a blanket with Lassie on one side and Willie on the other!

Good news. Mostly. Will has recovered from his 5 + hour root canal, but I remain a tad tweaked about the definition of a “fully functional tooth.” I choose the root canal for Will instead of an extraction because the vet specialist said it would leave Will with a full set of “fully functional teeth.” After the 5 hours of anesthesia and $1,600, the same vet said “His tooth is dead, and thus will become more brittle and more easily broken, so be sure to never let him chew on anything hard, like bones or hard toys or raw hides.”

Uh, no bones? Not even relatively soft, raw knuckle bones, like the big beef bones that Lassie and Willie get several times a week? “Nope.” The rest of our conversation, in which I was far more polite than I was feeling, included me asking “Have you ever seen a dog chew on a real bone?” (answer = no) and “Wouldn’t you consider chewing on a bone a normal behavior for a dog?” (I really was polite, honest.)

Fact is, if I had known before the procedure what I knew after, I would have made a different choice. (Note a comment came in from a reader who said she had a root canal done on her dog and the tooth broke not long after; she had to have it extracted eventually anyway.) However, it turns out (thanks to the kindly email of one of our readers) that extractions have their down sides too. I’d known it was more intrusive on the dog (Will’s tooth was the huge premolar in the upper jaw, the one w/ 3 roots embedded in the jaw), but I wasn’t told until recently that the teeth around an extraction tend to build up more tartar and may require the dog to be anesthetized more frequently to have his teeth cleaned.

However, I’ll admit to being a tad tweaked at the vet dentistry specialist, who was extremely nice and clearly very caring of Willie, but who didn’t give me all the information I needed to make an informed decision. But mostly, I was mad at myself. Why hadn’t I done more research before hand? Why hadn’t I lived on the internet the night before finding out every possible fact I could before I met with the specialist? Oh I’d done due diligence in a way, talked to 4 vets, found a great specialist who could see Will in a quiet but highly respected vet clinic, but still….

A dear friend, who also is a veterinarian, listened to me tell my story recently and said: “Vets who specialize in dentistry always tell you never to let your dog chew on bones…  no matter why you go to see them.” It  makes sense, if you think about it. Who are they going to see but dogs that have trouble with their teeth, including ones who broke a tooth when chewing on a bone?

So here’s my question to you, dear readers: what’s your take on the correlation (causation?) of chewing on real bones and broken teeth? After all, something broke Will’s tooth, and maybe it was chewing on a bone I gave him. Is there any research out there on bone chewing and teeth breaking? Probably… I’ll see what I can find, meanwhile, I’d love to hear your experiences. How many of you let your dogs chew on real bones without having problems with damaged teeth?  How about the opposite?

Meanwhile, back at the farm. It’s fall, it’s gorgeous and I love it! Here’s some New England Asters blooming in front of the side of the barn and a diagonal drain pipe:

And here’s Mr. Will last night in the evening light, moving the ewe flock so that I can put down their supplemental hay. Note pudgy Brittany (Spears) in the middle, and the small white lamb 2nd from left who magically oozes through the fence and gets back to her mamma no matter what we do….

Ahhh spring.  Finally the weather is mild enough to let the dogs lie outside and chew on bones. I just love watching my dogs chew on real, fresh bones. Of course, I would never give my dogs cooked bones (I know most of you know already that cooked bones are brittle and tend to splinter. Don’t ever give them to your dog.), but I love giving them the kind of fresh, raw bones that are safe–the large joint bones or large long bones from beef are my preference.

The first time I watched dogs chew on real bones I was astounded. Okay, that sounds pretty strong, but I had not anticipated how much exercise and skill it takes to chew on a bone.  All of the parts of a dog’s mouth, including the jaw muscles and different types of teeth are engaged in tearing, pulling, grinding and chewing. It was an epiphany watching them work out over a bone… “Oh! That’s what all those different kinds of teeth are for!” Chewing on large bones not only provides exercise, it must be so wonderful for dogs to be able to do it. Talk about doing things that you are good at and that you enjoy! Bones satisfy both of those criteria for dogs, and it is a joy for me to watch them do it. I spent a couple of minutes yesterday watching Lassie go to it.. I suspect she was in the state of flow that Csikszentmihalyi talks about as a route to true happiness. (I was taught to pronounce it “chick sent me high”!.. and I’m missing some accent marks, don’t know how to add them in the blog!)

I realize that there are lots of strong feelings about feeding bones, not feeding bones, canine nutrition, etc. It’s interesting how much things have changed since I got my first Border Collie, who was fed Purina Dog chow from the supermarket and lived 15.5 years.  Now my dogs get lots of fresh real food, high quality canned food, organic vegetables. Sometimes I have to stop myself from feeling guilty that I’m not feeding them well enough, and these are dogs who get custom made dinners every night (along with meat and vegetables, Lassie gets Steel-cut organic oats, Willie gets a sardine added to every dinner, etc). How to feed a dog is certainly is a hot topic: sometimes discussions about food get as heated as ones about politics. I try to avoid arguments about food, and keep my perspective relatively simple: I feed varied, high quality food, giving each dog the protein source I think is best for them.  It’s not all raw and it’s not all cooked. I’ll write more about feeding dogs if you are all interested, but for now…

here’s Lassie flowing in bone bliss:

And here are some photos new lambs: I got to watch Rosebud give birth last night (I have photos but they are pretty graphic, not sure that squeamish viewers would want to see!).

Here she’s licking off her first lamb, about 2 minutes after its birth. She swallows the sac, which provides nutrition, helps to dry off the lamb and prevent hypothermia and stimulate the lamb to get up and look for milk.

This next photo shows her licking off her second lamb, born about 2 minutes before the photo was taken. The first lamb was born about 10 minutes before, and is making her first attempt to stand.  I’m happy to say that all are doing well, last I checked–full, fat bellies and warm, toasty mouths, all signs of happy, healthy lambs.