Last Updated on March 8, 2023 by Woody Pet
Picture this:
You and your family have just finished eating a rather large dinner to celebrate Thanksgiving. Your mom cooked the family favorite: Roasted chicken with butter, and gravy which is all made more delicious and enticing because she has included her secret recipe, which is secret given that she is not willing to share any of it until any of you are worthy, kitchen-wise.
As you clean up after everyone has done eating, you notice a lot of chicken bones have been left, and you begin to ask yourself:
“Can dogs eat chicken bones?”
Come to think of it, dogs like to eat bones, nibble on the marrows, and extract the delicious bone meat from within. And it would be a waste to throw all of that chicken bone out in the bin and deny your dog some of the delicious chicken that your mom has cooked.
But the truth of the matter is, dogs should not be fed chicken bones.
In this topic, we are going to discuss why the case is so, and what you can do if you find your dog has eaten chicken bones.
Here’s Why It’s A Bad Idea To Feed Chicken Bones
It seems only second nature to us, dog owners, to want to feed our pet dogs any bones that were left from our meals. Steaks, beef bones, lamb chops, veal, and even deer bones are only some of the kinds of bones that dogs love to nibble on, munch about, and oddly in some instances, bury in our backyards.
But chicken bones, as well as turkey bones, duck bones, and basically any other bones of similar size or smaller should be kept out of paw’s reach from our canine companions.
Chicken bones, for one, are quite small and brittle. On the surface, eating them and grinding them is almost effortless for some larger dogs, while smaller dog breeds would have some trouble grinding and masticating these bones into smaller, consumable sizes. Still, either of them will have no trouble inevitably ingesting these down into their gullet.
Despite having this knowledge as to how efficient and effective your dog might be in ingesting chicken bones, you as a dog owner should not be complacent as there have been reported cases of dogs being on the brink of death due to eating chicken bones.
The Damage Of Chicken Bones Is Seldom On The Outside, But Often On The Inside
In some cases, dogs get chicken bones lodged and wedged in their teeth which can be yanked out either by tweezers or by your dog’s tongue or the chicken bones can just fall off on their own.
But the trouble that chicken bones bring mostly lies internally. You see, once the chicken bones are snapped into fragments, they become tiny shrapnel that can cause potential harm and injury to the internal organs of your dog once they are ingested and swallowed.
There have been cases in veterinary clinics wherein dogs have swallowed large amounts of chicken bones which have become such a great obstruction in their stomachs that the poor mutt in question had to be surgically operated on by opening up its stomach cavities for the chicken bones to be removed piece by piece.
What was discovered during the surgery was that the trouble began when large bones with wedged edges began to embed themselves in the walls of the dog’s stomach, thereby obstructing the digestive tract that leads to the small intestine. This wedge did not only wound the poor dog internally, it prevented anything else solid from passing through. As the dog ate more and more chicken bones, the obstruction became so bad that after half an hour of eating, the owner of the dog found his pet coughing, whimpering, howling in pain, and eventually vomiting blood.
Was when he immediately phoned the veterinarian of his dog and rushed his pet toward the veterinary clinic to be looked at.
After the ordeal, it was then realized by the dog owner that he and his pet were not the first ones to fall victim to what seemingly seems like normal behavior which is feeding your pet dog some chicken bones.
Oh No, My Dog Has Eaten Chicken Bones! What Do I Do? Follow These Steps To Save Your Dog’s Life
If you find yourself in a predicament wherein your dog somehow found its way into your bin and has almost finished eating the leftover chicken bones from last night’s Thanksgiving dinner, the first thing that you must do is to remove the discarded chicken bones immediately from your dog and let its veterinarian know what has happened.
The first question would be about how much chicken bones your dog has eaten how long from that point of the call has it been eating, and whether are there any distressing signs of pain or struggle your dog is showing.
The next thing that you would be advised to do is to bring your dog immediately into the veterinarian clinic for X-Rays and other check-ups.
If all is well and good, your dog can go home with you. If your dog’s veterinarian wants to make some further diagnosis, your dog has to stay over the clinic over a few days for further observation.
Either way, let this be a reminder to always discard the chicken bones somewhere out of paw’s reach from your dog so as to prevent something like this to occur ever again.
In summary…
In lieu of the query “Can dogs eat chicken bones?”, we have come to the conclusion that they most definitely should not be eating chicken bones or any bones of similar sizes.
The reason why is that these bones are tiny, and brittle and can become shrapnel in your dog’s digestive tract once ingested.
Problems from internal bleeding to lacerations in the esophagus, stomach cavity, and intestinal walls are only one of the few but life-threatening things that could happen to your dog.
