The Ugly Truth About Rawhide and Your Dog's Safety

If you've had a good look around our store, you might have noticed that we don't have any rawhide chews for sale.

 

There is a very good reason for that. We won't sell anything that we wouldn't feed to our own dogs - Baldrick Beagle and Marvinnotabeagle.

 

So, is rawhide bad for dogs? Why won't we give it to our dogs? Most people think it's a type of beef chew - the name certainly suggests that. It's cheap, it's longlasting, so what's the problem?

 

First up, it isn't beef - well it is, but it's not really. It isn't meat. It's the hide, usually from cattle although other animals may also be used When the hide goes to the tannery, it is treated with chemicals to preserve it. They are then treated to a nice acid bath to remove the hairs - no-one wants hairy leather shoes do they?

 

Once the top part of the hide has been removed to be used for leather goods, the tannery is left with the section below the 'grain'. Rather than waste that, they came up with this ingenious idea of turning it into a hard chew and selling it to dog owners.

So how do they make it so hard and chewy? This is the really disgusting part (well, the first part was pretty gross but this is worse).

It gets washed with bleach. Now, I know what you're thinking now. Sometimes, you see rawhide and it's a nice meaty colour, so that must be ok, right?

WRONG. It's been dyed. And those great bone shapes they come in? Well they do that by glueing the pieces together, and that glue also helps it last a long time.

So that tasty rawhide chew, marketed specifically for dogs isn't meat, has no nutritional value and has been through a chemical bath, an acid bath, been bleached, painted and glued.

Your dogs stomach can't break down the rawhide, so if it swallows a big chunk of it, there is a good chance it will cause a blockage. Even if it doesn't, by chewing on a by-product of the leather industry for several hours, it may have ingested lead, arsenic, mercury and formaldehyde - they have all been detected in rawhide dog chews.

So what rawhide is safe then? Are there any rawhide treats I can give my dog? The quick answer is none of them - rawhide always has the potential to cause your dog serious harm.

When you buy treats from us, you can be sure that the dehydrated treats are pure meat (or fish) that have been air dried. Nothing added. 100% meat. And that meat will be from animals raised here in Australia.

Our products are not just packaged here in Australia, they are real Aussie meat. We only sell the best, the best is never the cheapest, and we make no apologies for that. If you want some tasty healthy chews, these are our recommendations.