[yorkietalkjilly]

If you have ever had one of your babies fight for just a few molecules of air past the portion of chewie stuck in their throat like I did with Jilly for what turned out to be probably 20 minutes from when it happened until I put her down on the vet table late one night(we had no close E.R. vet and it just so happened my vet was in the clinic with another emergency), you will be very, very careful letting them have digestible chews or anything big that they might try to swallow too soon, before it is properly chewed to the size needed to pass through that tiny throat and not get stuck or go down wrong into the wrong place. She fought so hard to breathe past the rawhide for as long as she could and then she very very soon just lost her strength as she was getting so little oxygen and she just couldn't even fight to breathe anymore. I had to breathe for her and didn't knew how much of my air could get past that obstruction so I breathed a little harder than I normally would,hoping the force would cause more molecules to press by and praying I didn't damage something critical in the process but had I not, I am certain she would have been dead before we could get to the vet. Driving with one hand through the night while trying to breathe for your dying dog is about as stressful as it can get but all those prayers that were going through my head from the first time I realized how much trouble she was in must have gotten through. When I put her down on the vet table, she was able to breathe on her own. Somehow along the way, she had passed the obstruction on down and the swelling that had formed there had also started to subside considerably. Plus, the vet thought that the night air and her own adrenaline had helped the swelling plus he said that the saliva in her throat all that time was working to digest the outside of the rawhide and let it get smaller and slightly slippier.

So chews of any kind that they try to swallow should be treated as potentially dangerous as far as I'm concerned. That's why when I do give Tibbe one, which is very rare, I never take my eyes off him and if he's starting to swallow, unless I've seen him bite off a tiny piece, I remove it. It's hardly worth it but he gets some chewing that way. Just watch them like hawks if you choose to let them have these type chewies.