JR Pet Ostrich Bone

JR Pet Ostrich Bone is an air-dried ostrich bone, a long chew in a genuinely novel protein.

Key Features

• A long chew for a determined dog: Ostrich bone is substantial, and a dog that gets through everything else in an evening will be occupied by this. It is the heavyweight of the ostrich range.
• Ostrich is the novel protein that works: Almost no dog has ever eaten ostrich, which is the whole point of it. For a dog reacting to chicken, beef or lamb, a protein it has genuinely never met is what an exclusion diet needs, and ostrich is as far off the usual list as you can get.
• It floats: Which sounds trivial and is not, if your dog is one of the many that will carry a chew into a paddling pool or the sea and lose it. JR point it out themselves.
• From responsibly raised birds: JR describe the ostriches as either wild or humanely raised, and they name the sourcing rather than leaving it vague.

Chewing Safely

• Supervise every chew. A natural chew is not a toy you can leave a dog alone with, and the risk with all of them is the same one: a piece small enough to swallow whole.
• Take the end away once it gets down to a size the dog could gulp. That single habit prevents almost every chew related emergency there is.
• Match the chew to the dog. One a large dog finishes in two minutes has become a choking hazard, and one a small dog cannot mark at all just frustrates it.
• Fresh water alongside. Air-dried chews are dry by definition, and a dog that has worked at one will want a drink afterwards.
• Introduce a new chew gradually, a short session to begin with. A dog that has never had a hard chew will overdo it and end up with a sore mouth or a loose stool.
• Very hard chews can chip or fracture a tooth, particularly in an older dog or a determined chewer. If your dog attacks a chew rather than working at it, pick something softer.

How Much Is Too Much

• Treats want to sit at around a tenth of a dog's daily calories. Everything above that either comes out of the main meal or goes on as weight.
• Air-dried meat is dense, because the water has been taken out of it. A 100 g bag is closer to three or four hundred grams of fresh meat in what it actually delivers, so it goes much further than the weight suggests.
• For training, break them small. A dog works just as hard for a fingernail sized piece as for a whole stick, and you get ten times the repetitions out of the bag.
• On a day with a big chew in it, cut the dinner. That is far easier than trying to take the weight off afterwards.

Single Proteins And Exclusion Diets

• These are single named proteins with nothing else in them, and that is what makes the range useful for more than treating.
• If you are running an exclusion diet to find a food sensitivity, a single protein treat is the only kind you can give without undoing the whole exercise. A treat labelled 'meat and animal derivatives' tells you nothing about what the dog ate.
• The novel proteins are the ones a dog has probably never been exposed to: ostrich, kangaroo, goat, rabbit, venison, sea bass. A dog reacting to chicken and beef has usually never met any of those, which is why a vet will point you at them.
• Introduce one new protein at a time and leave a couple of weeks between them, or you will not know which one caused what.

Storing Them

• Air-dried rather than cooked, so they keep by being dry. Keep them dry and they last; let them get damp and they will go mouldy.
• Reseal the bag or tip them into an airtight tub, and keep them off a sunny shelf and away from the hob.
• That matters more in this climate than it does where they are made. A bag left open in a humid kitchen softens within days.
• Natural products vary. Piece size, colour and thickness differ from bag to bag, because these were parts of animals rather than something extruded to a spec.

Good To Know

• JR list it from three months old. In practice this is a chew for a dog with adult teeth and a sensible chewing style rather than a puppy that attacks things.
• Any hard bone carries a risk of a chipped tooth with a dog that bites down rather than gnaws. If that describes yours, the braided tendon or a cartilage moon bone is the safer buy.
• Sizes vary. Match it to the dog, and take it away when it gets small enough to swallow.
• Keep chews away from children, and wash your hands after handling them and after the dog has been chewing.