Richard Webb -> Mark Lewis wrote:
 RW> Hi Mark,

 RW> Mark Lewis wrote in a message to Jim White:

 ML>> of course, she's gotten all types of bones since she was 6 weeks
 ML>> old... she definitely knows how to eat chicken bones right along
 ML>> with pork and beef bones ;)

 RW> I hope you don't allow her to have them and if she gets them it's by
 RW> accident. DOgs should not be given poultry bones.

 RW> For the uninitiated that might be lurking along let me explain a bit.
 RW> COnsider a bird. IT flies.  because it's designed to fly its bones are
 RW> hollow, like structural members of an aircraft. A beef bone by contrast
 RW> is not hollow.  birds need hollow bones to be light enough to take
 RW> flight easily.

I know some folks who raise Huskies and feed ONLY a raw diet.  A thawed
plucked whole chicken is not an uncommon meal.  As it was explained to me,
the cooking makes the bones brittle and subject to splintering.

 RW> Now, being hollow, it's liable to splinter.  Especially when cooked. My
 RW> ROxy the street rottie used to scavenge for food and ate all sorts of
 RW> chicken bones.  HEnce some of the intestinal problems she had when we
 RW> first adopted her. NO matter how careful we were one slipped by
 RW> occasionally.

 RW> ONe night when we were first displaced after Katrina and living in a
 RW> motel room we'd stopped to get a packet of CHurch's chicken. There was
 RW> one extra drumstick after the wife and i each had our share.  I was
 RW> going to do some paperwork on this computer which I'd salvaged, so I
 RW> went to hand the extra piece to her (the wife that is) to peel from the
 RW> bone for the dog. ROxy reached up, snatched it out of my hand in midpass
 RW> and gulped it down, big end first.  I swear that drumstick never touched
 RW> teeth.

I would not be surprised.  The Huskie loving neighbor once looked out to
see a squirrel tail sticking out of his large male's mouth.  When asked to
"drop it", the dog swallowed and the squirrel was gone.  It never
caused any problems, so apparently, they have an enzyme that can break down
the raw bone.

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