QUESTION:  Does the consumption of bones promote a better state of nutrition or health in the dog?

ANSWER:
Here’s what happens and what makes people think that “bones” are so nutritious… when a pet caretaker feeds bones (most select raw bones, not cooked) there is also included attached to those bones all sorts of muscle, fat, connective tissue and cartilage.  If the dog has been fed a grain-based or otherwise deficient diet, the addition of the “bones” will make a remarkably beneficial difference in not only how the dog looks but also how it feels and acts.  Caretakers will naturally tout the great benefits to be gained from feeding “bones”.  (Interestingly, the same testimonials are made by pet owners who switch from poor diets to those with meat as a primary ingredient and who wouldn’t even think of feeding a bone.)  The impression that anyone will gain is that somehow the “bones” have made the difference.  Somehow everyone overlooks the contribution to the diet from the tissues attached to the bone!

Having studied biochemistry, anatomy, histology, physiology and nutrition in veterinary school I wondered how bone, all by itself, could have such remarkable effects.  I knew that bone was a highly indigestible substance for mammals and was very narrow in its spectrum of nutritional components.  So, I did a little studying and posted the summary of that analysis TheAnswerVet.com here.  It turns out that mammal bones… all by themselves and stripped of any soft tissues… provide very little nutritional benefits to dogs other than being a good source of calcium and phosphorus.

We pet caretakers need to establish definitions for words we frequently use relative to “feeding bones” in order to be more precise about what we are trying to describe.  For example some animal caretakers, when using the word “bone”, mean the “skeletal structure” only, with no attendant soft tissues or cartilage.  Others use the word “bone” to refer to a chunk of tissue that has the bony skeletal parts and all attached muscle, fat, cartilage and connective tissues.  Some people, when referring to feeding “bones” to their dogs mean only “raw bones” and would never feed cooked bones.  Some would never feed a pork bone but believe that beef bones are harmless; some believe beef bones are dangerous to feed but poultry bones are innocuous.  Some believe that “bones must be fed otherwise you are depriving the dog of emotional and nutritional well-being”.   Someday we all will be more specific about what we really mean when we say we “feed bones” to our dogs.  Right now the term “feeding bones” is ambiguous and nonspecific.  Everybody needs to be on the same page and a good page to start with is the one that I mentioned at TheAnswerVet.com that shows how little nourishment is actually present in “a mammalian skeletal bone, devoid of all soft tissues and cartilage”.

I wondered what was creating all this perceived benefit that so many dog owners were really seeing when “bones” were added to deficient diets.  Well, it turns out that since we know that the bare bone itself has few nutrients (the marrow is mostly fat and is of rather low volume in any bone) the benefits must have been coming from the tissues still attached to the bone such as muscle, fat, cartilage and connective tissue!  Those soft tissues were truly beneficial, of high digestibility and contained a wide spectrum of nutrients.  It is my personal conviction based on established and verifiable scientific data, as well as 37 years of observing pets on a daily basis, that it is the various tissues attached to bone, not the bare bone itself, that provides all those great benefits so often seen when “bones” are fed. “Chewing on bones cleans the dog’s teeth.”  Yes that can happen but so will chewing on a hard rawhide, Nylabone or Kong toy and with these provisions there is minimal risk of any medical/surgical problems.