JR Pet Ostrich Knuckle Bone

JR Pet Ostrich Knuckle Bone is an air-dried ostrich knuckle, the largest chew in the ostrich range.

Key Features

• The biggest and the longest-lasting: A knuckle is the joint end of the bone, so it is irregular, dense and full of shapes a dog has to work around. That is what makes it last longer than a straight bone of the same weight.
• Calcium and phosphorus from the bone itself: JR point to both. They come from the bone rather than from anything added, though a bone is a treat rather than a mineral supplement and should not be counted as one.
• 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.
• Low odour and not greasy: The usual objection to natural chews is the smell and the marks they leave on furniture. The ostrich range is notably better on both counts, which makes it the indoor choice.

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

• This is the chew for a large dog that destroys everything else. It is not the right buy for a small dog, which will not make an impression on it.
• JR list it from twelve weeks. A knuckle is hard, so a young puppy with soft teeth is better off on tendon or cartilage until the adult teeth are in.
• A hard bone can chip a tooth in a dog that bites rather than gnaws. Watch how yours approaches it in the first session and stop if it is cracking rather than working at it.
• Keep chews away from children, and wash your hands after handling them and after the dog has been chewing.