Posted by Zena Conkey on Apr 30, 2020
You won’t find any rawhide chews at K9active. This is because we only sell the best possible food and treats for your dog. Rawhide has some shocking secrets and has hit the headlines in recent years, read on to see why.
Dogs Naturally Magazine state that rawhide is “The most dangerous dog chew ever”. For good reason too.
Rawhide chews are animal skin, yet strictly speaking they are closer to leather than they are to food. A typical by-product of the leather industry rawhide chew creation is pretty terrifying. Check Out Rodney Habib's Video on "How Rawhide chews are made"
When the skin is removed from an animal it begins to blacken straightaway, unless it is chemically treated from the offset. So it is dipped in a chemical bath, in a process that is the first in a long line of chemical treatments before the chew reaches your dog.
Next the skin is treated with another chemical that puffs it up in order to separate the two natural layers. The layers are then separated and the outer area goes on to become leather that makes sofas, coats and similar articles. The inner layer becomes rawhide chews.
At this point the skin is dyed if the creator deems it necessary and sold to pet stores. By now a rawhide chew can have as many as seven or eight chemicals added to the original skin of the animal, some highly toxic to dogs.
The concerns don’t stop there though. When a dog chews a rawhide a very specific chewing behaviour is triggered. Chewing for dogs is rhythmic and a natural stress relief act that can also become an obsessive behaviour. The animal chews the dried skin (the leather) until it becomes a mass of foreign substance then swallows.
The mass can become lodged anywhere between the dog’s throat and bowel, causing serious blockage in the digestive system that will be fatal if not treated (with emergency surgery). Symptoms of blockage include rapid loss of condition, excessive vomiting and serious illness.
In addition to all of the risks rawhide also carries no nutritional value at all. Over treatment and chemical additives take away and perceived nutritional value and in fact add a lot of potentially toxic substances to the digestive system of the dog. Interestingly rawhide chews are made from the same area of the animal as glue, gelatin and cosmetics.
With added Bleach, Lead, Arsenic, Mercury, Chromium salts, Formaldehyde and other toxic chemicals have been detected in raw hides. All of these wonderful ingredients are added to make the chew look presentable, remove the smell associated with rotting skin, add colour to cover up damage and give the rawhide chew a lifetime shelf life. We have to ask, should anyone really be eating something with a lifetime shelf life? Probably not!
So, this is exactly why we don’t stock rawhide chews at K9active. For the health and well-being of your dogs. Why not go and look at our natural dog treat range and even the Earth Animal No-Hide chews instead?
Reference: