Does rawhide really clean teeth?

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Lori541

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#1
I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I've tried every kind there is, including the pressed rawhide, but I don't see Kendall's teeth any cleaner.

It did take care of her breath though.

Can anyone recommend something that can clean teeth, other than brushing?
 
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dogsarebetter

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#3
raw hides, bully sticks, raw meaty bones, and there is even something you can put in the water to help with tarter and breath.
 

ACooper

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#6
beef knuckle bones (raw) here.

I can say that Orson's teeth are 100% white and lovely at age 3 1/2, and Phoebe's teeth are white and look great at age 11! The only issue is a cracked molar discovered last year, no idea when or how it happened, (she used to be a mega chewer so it could have been ANYTHING) isn't causing her any pain at the moment (vet poked around on it and got zero response from her) so we are leaving it alone for now :)
 

Lolas Dad

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#7
I've use bully sticks. You need to get the really hard ones though. Petco has them and they are not packaged. The packaged ones are filled and very soft.
 

Miakoda

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#8
Chewing on any hard substance whether it be rawhide or a raw bone or a brick will help keep your dog's teeth clean.

But I will say that rawhides are the hands-down most common thing we remove from dogs' insides during exploratory surgeries or surgeries to remove foreign objects. I'm totally not a fan and would personally never give them to any of my dogs.
 

dogsarebetter

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#9
I do not think there is anything wrong with feeding raw hide if you supervise, and KNOW your dogs chewing habits.
I would never feed a strong chewer who is also a fast chewer, and gulper raw hide.
 
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#11
To keep my dogs teeth clean I brush them everyday with an enzymatic toothpaste and use Petzlife gel once every three days... it works very well, keeps them perfectly white.

I give them bully sticks, wishbones, etc to help keep their teeth strong and their muscles working but I dont find them to really help with tartar at all.

I also dont like rawhide and prefer not to give it to my dogs.
 
T

tessa_s212

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#12
IMO, there is NOTHING that can clean your dog's teeth better than a raw bone (other than a dental scaling). Brushing teeth will just *never* cut it.

I won't give rawhide to my dogs, but when I did a long time ago, all they would do is turn to mush. They never cleaned. Cocoa LOVES pig ears, but they don't clean well either.

Not all dogs are really big into chewing. Cocoa is only a moderate chewer with the raw marrow bones I used to give her. She'd chew/lick them until the meatyness to it was gone, and then walk away. She never got down and really chewed and knawed on them to clean her teeth. I wish she would, but she just doesn't "self clean" her teeth really well with bones alone, so I do have to "supplement" her teeth cleaning with yearly dentals (less often if I could have fed her more bones more often). Fudge, however, was the biggest chewer I've ever known. Not only are his teeth PEARLY white at 10 years old, but he's worn then down a bit. All thanks to bones and any of the other odd things he chewed on. If they weren't worn, you'd swear he couldn't be over a year old with how perfectly white they are. I've never before seen a dog his age with that clean of teeth.
 
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#14
maybe not for YOU... but it works for a lot of people... so dont be so quick to tell someone it will never work.
^^ Seconded!!

I used tooth-brushing with my *heart* dog Cheyenne (a Golden Retriever) from the time she was a puppy, with enzymatic toothpaste from the vet. She lived to be over 15 years old and only ever needed one dental in her life ... and that was at 13 yrs. old to get a barely discernible couple of tartar lines near her gum line in the very back, and was done while she was in for another surgery. She rarely got raw bones ... and was never interested when she did. She didn't care for rawhide either.

Doing the same with Riley, our Westie who we have had from a puppy. Our shelter Golden, Buddy, will as yet still not allow his teeth to be brushed ... at least not nearly enough to do a good job ... so he gets raw knuckle bones, which he does like.
 
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#16
My old dog Gus ate about a dozen 1/4" thick rawhide strips just about every single day of his life, and at 14.5 when we had to put him down due to probable prostate cancer, his teeth were spotless. Nice and white, and no visible wear anywhere, except he had a couple points missing from when I gave him a hoof, and he really cranked down on it. He did have callouses all over his gums though. Didn't seem to bother him any,
 

DanL

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#17
Raw bones here. None of my current dogs have ever had a rawhide.
 

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