Supervision on bone day





Yesterday was yet another bone day for the pooches. As the girls get older they are needing a good old bone to chew on; a lot more often. I took three bones out of the freezer Sunday evening; they sat until yesterday morning in the refrigerator. Then at noon I put them onto the counter to warm up a bit. There was much interest in the bones; I swear the dogs can be on the other side of the house and know the exact moment that the bones are taken out. Luke is the first in the kitchen; he adores bone days.

After a couple of hours on the counter they are ready to serve up. The next question is "what am I going to do while they chew?" Bone chewing is a very supervised event; I don't want any scuffles. All three are very good about staying with their own bone but I don't want to open a can of worms so I supervise 100% of the time. I decided to make some cookies; dog cookies, poodle cookies to be specific. First time using my new poodle cookie cutter ;)

So while the dogs chewed I mixed,rolled and baked cookies while keeping one eye and both ears directed outside. Even though Luke is the most excited about chew day; he is also the first to be "over" the bones. So it is Luke who decides how long the chew lasts. Yesterday he was very quick; he was pretty much over it in 45 minutes, which was not long enough for my liking. Luke came into the kitchen to see what I was doing; leaving his bone to the others. Luckily the girls were more than involved with their own bones to notice that Luke's bone now lay unattended. I decided to try to spark a bit of interest back into the bone chewing for him so that he would get a bit more teeth cleaning.

We went out together; Luke watched me intently. I went over to Tilley and started the bone trade; Tilley's is traded for Jessie's bone, Luke gets Jessie's bone and Tilley gets Luke's. This always leads to more enthusiastic chewing "a new bone." So Luke chewed for another good 15 min., and the girls enjoyed their new chew. After the 15 minutes Luke came in again; he went into the living room. I was just finishing up my last batch and then I was going to gather the bones. After a couple of minutes I heard chewing. Oh no; not on the cream carpet, yep. Luke brought his big raw meaty bone into the living room to chew. That was my sign that chew time was over.

With cookies done and things to do I commenced the bone pick up. As I've said before; the bone trade really helps to eliminate the "loosing your bone" idea at my approach. After the bones are gone there is the scrap sniffing left to do. Once that was done it was into the kitchen to check out the fresh baked cookies. They all enjoyed chowing down on a poodle cookie; but I think Jessie especially like chomping the head off of a poodle.

2 comments:

  1. I wonder how many people realize that a good bone from the butcher is an effective toothbrush and I am glad you shared that valuable information with your readers! Good idea to trade a homemade cookie in order to get the bone away from the dogs too. I've tried it many times with an English bulldog puppy and it works 90% of the time!

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  2. Petsitgal; I don't trade a cookie for the bone, I cleared that up. It must be of equal or higher value than the bone to work. I trade the bones; each dog gets a chew with the others bone. This works very well.

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