St Francis College of Natural Animal Health in Perth, Western Australia | Education

St Francis College of Natural Animal Health

Locality: Perth, Western Australia

Phone: +61 1300 132 966

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24.01.2022 The 13 Worst Pet Foods of the Year Looking for better food options? Check out - https://www.facebook.com/groups/insidescoopers/ video credit: Companion Animal Network

16.01.2022 I like this explanation.

08.01.2022 Should I give my dog bones? What sort of bones should I give? We get this question daily. You’ll see lots of different answers. This is Dr Glenn’s take on the s...ubject. Have a listen to the video and come back and read the notes. Dr Glenn recommends supervising pets with bones. Particularly if it is a new size or shape of bones. I would always recommend confining a dog if it is having its bone. This means that if you have multiple dogs they are separate and in a small area and cannot have any altercations because bones are pretty high on the value scale to dogs. If multiple dogs are separated they will feel less inclined to need to scoff the bone and can settle down and enjoy the process of chewing it a little more to. This can help some of the scoffers who just want to swallow everything quickly. It also means that any bone that is left after half an hour can be picked up and thrown away. A good idea is to swap the remaining bone for a tasty treat of some sort that the dog likes so it is not as though you are stealing something valuable from them. If your pet has never had a raw meaty bone before I would recommend starting with a relatively small amount. That doesn’t mean necessarily a small bone. A bone of substantial size cannot be scoffed and attempted to be swallowed quickly. It may mean that the dog only has that phone for five minutes or so before you swap it out for a treat and give it a bone again the next opportunity for progressively longer. I am not a fan of deer antler, goat horn, cattle hooves. These are all still very hard substances that present risk of tooth fractures. I have seen fractured teeth from Antlers and Horns. Dogs love them but these considerable risk in my opinion. On the negative side there is a small risk of bacterial infection from bones. I would recommend only feeding bones that have had continual refrigeration and preferably has been frozen for two weeks. This eliminates parasites. There is a small risk in dogs fed chicken products that are raw especially mix that may be exposed to a bacteria that rarely causes a disease called PolyRadiculoneuritis. ( Coon Hound Paralysis). I have posted about this before. I still feed my own dogs raw chicken necks and wings and feel the risk is very low. Each year I see two or three dogs with a piece of bone stuck in their mouth somewhere. These can be those raw or cooked bones. The problem is usually easily solved with straightforward removal or sedation then removal without any long-term or significant consequences. There is choking hazard with any food. I had had one dog present choking on a raw bone and it was removed successfully 18 years ago. I have had one clients pet who probably choked and died on a raw bone 3 years ago . I have also performed a post-mortem on a pet who choked on a leaf blocking its Larynx. All in all, the risk of not giving your pet bones to chew of the appropriate size and shape to keep the teeth clean is significantly lower than the incidence of severe dental disease, pain and suffering, heart valve disease and kidney and liver disease that I see daily from not feeding appropriate bones. See more