Pearly Whites

February is National Pet Dental Health Month. As a result, Chewy.com offered several different dental chews for their bloggers to try. I chose to review Merrick's Big Brush Bones for dogs over 25 pounds. My dogs have fairly nice teeth thanks to being fed a raw diet, but there is always room for fresher breath! No offense boys!

These bones are a decent size, maybe five inches long, as they need to be for a bigger dog. Here's a shot to give you a good idea of the size....

The boys were very interested in what I had and were more than willing to be my dental chew guinea pigs.....

These bones are slightly pliable if you try to bend them but are quite hard.  They have a slightly "grassy" smell that's fairly strong. Not really a smell I liked, but we all know dogs are much more generous in their opinions of what smells edible, ahem.

I gave each dog a bone at the same time. Wilson was the more photogenic so here he is, savoring his treat....Check out all the drool!

Now I thought these bones would crumble like a hard biscuit, but they actually seemed to be chewy, almost like a very stiff taffy. It probably took Wilson two minutes to chew it up, and Jimmy even longer. I was pleased to see them actually chew and not gulp!

These bones are grain and gluten free, but are certainly not a "health food". I can't say whether continued use would clean their teeth. One BIG negative I see is that they are super high calorie, each bone having a whopping 109 calories! That takes a big bite out of your dog's daily calorie allowance. If you need to watch your dog's weight, these would be too high calorie to feed on a daily basis. I will definitely finish this bag, but due to the calorie content, won't get more.

Many thanks to Chewy.com for letting us try these bones. And as always, the opinions expressed here are all my own and those of my lucky taste-testers, Wilson and Jimmy. We were not compensated for this review other than receiving the bag of dental chews at no charge.