You may want your baby back, baby back, baby back ribs, but can your dog eat rib bones as a treat once you’ve finished your dinner?
While there’s nothing inherently toxic to dogs about cooked pork or beef rib meat, bones are another story. Consuming rib bones increases the chances of your dog choking and experiencing severe digestion problems, including sharp bones puncturing the gastrointestinal tract. Veterinarians like Renee Schmid, DVM, DABVT, DABT, a veterinarian toxicologist who works with Pet Poison Helpline, have begun recommending against giving dogs bones to chew on.
Here’s why.
Can Dogs Eat Rib Bones? A Look at Different Preparation Methods
Raw Ribs: A Risk
When humans cook meat and other food, we’re doing a lot of work to make it more digestible: We’re softening it, breaking down the more difficult-to-digest parts, and making sure we cook off bacteria or other contaminants that could make us sick.
Dogs have lived a long time on this earth eating raw meat and crunching up bones, but if something went wrong in the wild, there was no veterinary hospital for a dangerously blocked-up or choking dog. Nowadays, you can be sure that a stuck bone can end up as one heck of a hospital bill.
“Raw meats can cause food poisoning due to bacteria, which is a risk for humans handling the food as well,” Schmid says. “Raw pork also carries the risk of transmission of a roundworm called Trichinella spiralis, which can lead to Trichinosis in you or your pet.” Eww!
Raw ribs present less of a danger of a dog breaking them into smaller, more dangerous pieces that can be swallowed and get stuck in their digestive tract, but many veterinarians advise against letting dogs chew them unless they’re carefully supervised. Even then, you never know when your dog might successfully crack a bone into a piece that could be accidentally swallowed.
Cooked Rib Bones: A Greater Risk
Cooked rib bones carry an even greater risk than raw beef or pork rib bones because cooking dries out and weakens bones, making them more likely to break.
“These bones, cooked or uncooked, are a risk to dogs for causing foreign body obstructions that may require surgery,” Schmid says. “And slivers of the bones can perforate the intestinal tract, leading to sepsis and death.”
Cooked Rib Meat: Depends
There is nothing inherently toxic or poisonous about cooked beef or pork for dogs. But as with any human food, there are ingredients in seasonings, barbecue rubs, sauces, salt, sugar, and other tasty additions that can upset your dog’s stomach. Too much salt in one meal or even over longer periods can harm your dog’s health, as canines don’t need a lot of sodium in their diet. Extra calories can put pounds on your dog, and extra fat (even a single extra-fatty meal) can inflame a dog’s pancreas and cause health problems.
Signs of upset stomach or pancreatitis from too much fat may include vomiting, diarrhea, or loss of appetite, Schmid says.
If you really, really want to offer a little bit of cooked rib meat to your dog, keep it lean (light on the fat) and avoid pieces that contain any additives like sauce or seasoning. But don’t panic over a few nibbles, Schmid says.
“Onions and garlic are toxic to dogs,” she says, “but the amount in rubs and seasonings is not likely to be enough to be a toxicity concern.”
The Dangers of Feeding Dogs Rib Bones
So, you’ve kept the fatty and heavily seasoned ribs away from your pooch (great work!), but surprise, surprise, your four-legged friend stole some bones out of the trash or off a plate. How much do you really need to worry about? There are a few things to watch out for if your pup’s a counter-surfer or trash digger who came up with a BBQ snack.
Choking: The first and most obvious risk is that they could choke. Choking situations are obvious and can be scary, says Schmid, and require an immediate visit to an emergency hospital: “The dog will be trying to cough and will collapse due to a lack of oxygen.”
Gastrointestinal complications: If a bone is lodged in your dog’s esophagus (anywhere from the throat down to where the throat meets the stomach), your pup may be excessively drooling, coughing, rubbing their head and neck along the ground, or possibly vomiting. If a dog has persistent vomiting, significant lethargy, pain in the abdomen, bloody stool, or other signs of the bone being lodged in the esophagus, they need to get to a vet clinic right away.
And even if you know your dog has eaten a bone or a piece of a bone but isn’t showing signs of distress, you should still contact a vet clinic ASAP, Schmid says: “Radiograph images can be taken to help determine the likelihood of the bone passing on its own, and we can see whether making your dog vomit might bring the bone up.”
Safer Alternatives to Rib Bones
If you’ve sworn off animal bones for your dog, it’s not the end of the world for your dog. Many safer alternatives mimic the pleasure of gnawing on a bone.
Try sticking tasty frozen treats into different, durable chew toys to make a more of a long-lasting challenge for your dog to chew and lick. There are even several longer-lasting chew bone treat options that can even help your dog’s dental health as they chew. Win-win!
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