The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Thursday that a lower court “clearly erred” when it held that South Carolina racially gerrymandered its congressional district map. The majority held that the “circumstantial evidence falls far short of showing that race, not partisan preferences, drove the districting process” behind the creation of the map. “First, a party challenging a map’s constitutionality must disentangle race and politics if it wishes to prove that the legislature was motivated by race as opposed to partisanship,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion. “Second, in assessing a legislature’s work, we start with a presumption that the legislature acted in good faith.” “In this case, which features a challenge to South Carolina’s redistricting efforts in the wake of the 2020 census, the three-judge District Court paid only lip service to these propositions,” Alito continued, writing that the court’s findings of fact were “clearly erroneous under the appropriate legal standard.” Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that the majority’s opinion “betrays its distance from, and lack of familiarity with, the events and evidence central to this case.” “The majority picks and chooses evidence to its liking; ignores or minimizes less convenient proof; disdains the panel’s judgments about witness credibility; and makes a series of mistakes about expert opinions,” Kagan wrote. “The majority declares that it knows better than the District Court what happened in a South Carolina map-drawing room to produce District 1.” The three-judge panel that initially found the map had been racially gerrymandered already modified its order in March to allow the map to be used during the 2024 election due to the Supreme Court’s delay in resolving the appeal. “The ideal must bend to the practical,” the panel concluded, citing rapidly approaching deadlines for the primary season and the lack of a new plan. The judges initially found in January 2023 that race was the “predominant motivating factor” when lawmakers moved over 30,000 black residents from one district to another, ruling that Congressional District No. 1 on the resulting map was racially gerrymandered in violation of the 14th Amendment. Republican Rep. Nancy Mace won the district in 2022 by nearly 14 points following the redistricting. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate concurrence to express his view that the court “has no power to decide these types of claims.” “Drawing political districts is a task for politicians, not federal judges,” he wrote. “There are no judicially manageable standards for resolving claims about districting, and, regardless, the Constitution commits those issues exclusively to the political branches.” “The Court’s insistence on adjudicating these claims has led it to develop doctrines that indulge in race-based reasoning inimical to the Constitution,” Thomas continued. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Supreme Court Rules South Carolina Did Not Racially Gerrymander Congressional District Map appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Better late than never. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the giant federal agency housing the National Institutes of Health, just suspended a New York-based organization from participating in government procurement programs over its role as a subcontractor for a Chinese research facility connected to the first outbreak of COVID-19. HHS also notified Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, of his organization’s suspension from eligibility for government grant programs for at least three years. Following Daszak’s sworn testimony, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, chaired by Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, published an extensive staff report May 1 on EcoHealth Alliance’s research activities. That report recommended suspension and debarment proceedings against Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, which had been a subcontractor for the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. HHS, heeding the subcommittee’s recommendations, did just that. The subcommittee on the COVID-19 pandemic held another hearing Wednesday in which Republicans and Democrats alike questioned David Morens, a former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, longtime chief of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about what a staff memorandum calls “overwhelming evidence” that Morens “engaged in serious misconduct and potentially illegal actions.” Morens testified, in part, that he didn’t realize that deleting certain emails would constitute destroying or tampering with federal records when he wrote about doing so in correspondence related to COVID-19. “I was not aware that anything I deleted like emails was a federal record,” Morens said at one point, as the New York Post reported.  The subcommittee’s staff memo cites previously unreleased emails, obtained by subpoena, that it says incriminate Morens in “undermining the operations of the U.S. government, unlawfully deleting federal COVID-19 records, using a personal email to avoid the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and repeatedly acting unbecoming of a federal employee.” How did we get to this point? The Record Since 2014, EcoHealth Alliance has received approximately $8 million in federal government grants to study coronaviruses. In 2020, the Trump administration terminated grant funding for the organization. However, despite unresolved controversies, the Biden administration in 2022 approved $650,000 in renewed funding for EcoHealth. In 2023, the HHS Office of Inspector General found that the National Institutes of Health had failed to effectively monitor its grants to EcoHealth for research that incurred “inherent risks.” HHS’ recent Action Referral Memorandum was based on an accumulation of communications between 2014 and 2024 between EcoHealth and NIH that revealed lapses in reporting, absence of lab files and crucial records on viral experiments, regulatory noncompliance, and repeated failures in transmitting critical information to NIH, particularly in the final report. In her May 15 memorandum to Daszak, Henrietta K. Brisbon, deputy assistant HHS secretary for acquisitions, declared: As established in the record, the NIH review of the Year 5 I-RPPR [Research Performance Progress Report] submitted by EHA [EcoHealth Alliance], more than two years late, determined that an experiment by WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology], shown in Figure 13 of the report, had possibly yielded a greater than 1 log increase in viral activity (a tenfold increase in serum viral load), in violation of the terms of the grant. The NIH gave EHA and WIV several opportunities to disprove this finding, but EHA and WIV failed to do so. Due to EHA’s and WIV’s failure to adequately respond to the NIH requests that the required materials to support WIV’s research reported in the grant RPPRs [Research Performance Progress Reports] and the I-RPPRs be provided, the NIH’s conclusion that WIV research likely violated protocols of the NIH regarding biosafety is undisputed. For its part, EcoHealth Alliance not only failed to submit its Year 5 report after almost two years, but Daszak insisted that his organization was, for an inexplicable technical reason, “locked out” of NIH’s reporting system. His claim, however, is unsubstantiated. Thus, the subcommittee concluded in its report: “EcoHealth violated its grant terms and conditions by failing to report a potentially dangerous experiment conducted by the WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology].” Word Games Focused on uncovering the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, congressional investigators have tried to determine whether any federal funding inadvertently contributed to the laboratory development of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Certain facts are indisputable. China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the initial outbreak of COVID-19 occurred, was a center of coronavirus research. There were biosafety problems at the institute, a fact reported by U.S. State Department officials as early as 2018. These problems were acknowledged by Chinese authorities, who identified five “categories” where the Wuhan lab failed to meet China’s national safety standards. A top scientist at the lab, Shi Zhengli, known as the Bat Lady of China, was a subcontractor for EcoHealth Alliance and she also engaged in gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses. Such research is designed to enhance the virulence and the transmissibility of pathogens. In 2015, Shi was also a collaborator with microbiologist Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina and other scientists on published research, approved by NIH, about the potential of bat coronaviruses to infect humans. NIH officials nonetheless maintained that EcoHealth’s work with Shi was at the time outside the scope of their restrictions on gain-of-function research. EcoHealth, as noted, had received millions of dollars in government grants over several years and allocated a portion of that funding for research work in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The institute was unquestionably engaged in dangerous gain-of-function research designed, as noted, to enhance the pathogenicity and transmissibility of coronaviruses. The crucial question for the House’s pandemic subcommittee was whether any taxpayer funds were used to facilitate such research. Money, of course, is fungible. In its report, the subcommittee noted that the NIH website, as of Oct. 19, 2021, defined gain-of-function research as “a type of research that modifies a biological agent so that it confers a new or enhanced activity to that agent.” Subsequently, in public statements and congressional testimony, Fauci and other NIH officials used a different definition, the “P3CO Framework,” which they determined to be a framework for research that would be appropriate under government regulation. This framework didn’t encompass all forms of gain-of-function research, but a “subset” of such research focused on enhanced “potential pandemic pathogens.” This is a reference to “highly transmissible” and “virulent” pathogens that are likely to cause “significant” human morbidity and mortality. Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., recently asked Dr. Lawrence Tabak, NIH’s former acting director, whether the agency funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab through EcoHealth Alliance. Tabak responded: “It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research. If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did … the generic term is research that goes on in many, many labs around the country. It is not regulated. And the reason it’s not regulated is it poses no threat or harm to anybody.”    The central point of contention, then, is the meaning of gain-of-function research. As House subcommittee staff observed: “Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, many scientists and government officials categorially denied that taxpayer funds were used for gain-of-function research in Wuhan at the WIV. These assertions rested on semantics and the misapplication of understood definitions.”   Further, subcommittee staff reported, “witness testimony and a plain reading of EcoHealth’s research conducted at the WIV using taxpayer dollars confirm it facilitated an experiment that conveyed new or enhanced activity to a pathogen—thus satisfying the definition of gain-of-function research.” In the interim staff report, the pandemic subcommittee concluded: “EcoHealth used taxpayer dollars to facilitate gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in Wuhan at the WIV, contrary to previous public statements, including those by Dr. Anthony Fauci.” The Big Picture Jim Geraghty, National Review’s senior political correspondent, recently put this set of events in proper perspective. “Stories don’t get any bigger than the origin of a virus that caused a global pandemic that effectively shut down the world for over a year and changed the lives of every human being on the planet,” Geraghty wrote. To be clear, the evidence thus far shows that the Wuhan Institute of Virology indeed did gain-of-function coronavirus research, and Fauci was aware of that fact. The evidence also shows that  EcoHealth collaborated with the Wuhan lab Institute in coronavirus research, including an experiment to infect genetically engineered mice.   But as yet there is no direct evidence that taxpayers funded a specific experiment at Wuhan, resulting in a “lab leak” that caused the global COVID-19 pandemic. That’s why congressional investigators must remain unrelenting in their search for the truth and thwart attempts to ignore, downplay, or rewrite the history of the deadly pandemic. In that connection, Heritage Foundation colleagues have detailed how Washington’s public health establishment promoted the narrative of a natural origin for the novel coronavirus and how NIH officials and grantees worked to discredit the likelihood of a Chinese “lab leak” as a “conspiracy theory.” EcoHealth’s Daszak played a key role in this impressive public relations offensive. He was an organizer and signatory of a March 7, 2020, letter published by The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal. The letter signed by Daszak and 25 others in “solidarity” with China’s scientists warned: “Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumors, and prejudice that jeopardize our global cooperation in the fight against this virus.”  Ten days later, on March 17, 2020, several top NIH-funded virologists published a seminal article in Nature Medicine, a prominent scientific journal, emphasizing that the new coronavirus wasn’t a “laboratory construct.” Their article followed a Feb. 1 teleconference with Fauci. It was an odd turn of events, since the authors of the Nature Medicine article had no independent access to Chinese data and, in fact, initially expressed the view that the novel coronavirus appeared to have a lab origin. Nonetheless, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, citing the Nature Medicine article on March 26, 2020, said it provided scientific evidence for the natural origins of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and discredited the notion that the pandemic originated in a lab. The dominant media narrative was set.   For the record, Collins since has told Congress  that the Chinese “lab leak” hypothesis no longer should be considered a “conspiracy theory.” Federal public health officials’ strong affirmation in 2020 that the pandemic had a “natural” origin was, to put it charitably, a big stretch. Beginning in January 2020, officials in Communist China locked down the city of Wuhan, denied outside access to vital information, and punished dissident Chinese scientists while insisting that the deadly coronavirus had a natural origin—probably an infected animal. Speculation on the infected “host” has ranged from a pangolin to a raccoon dog, caged in Wuhan’s “wet market.” To date, however, no such viral host has been identified.  Taxpayer Victory Wenstrup, chairman of the House pandemic subcommittee, issued a statement May 15 on the HHS response. “EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH,” Wenstrup said. “These actions are wholly abhorrent [and] indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action,” the Ohio Republican added. “Eco Health’ s immediate funding suspension and future debarment is not only a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide.”  Wenstrup announced his intention to deepen the congressional probe into New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, identify discrepancies in Daszak’s sworn testimony, and compel the organization’s leader to produce more documents. Meanwhile, subcommittee investigators found evidence that Morens, the senior adviser to Fauci, deleted federal records related to the pandemic and used his personal email to avoid disclosure of sensitive communications to Congress and the public. This House subcommittee is unrelenting. Up next: Fauci is scheduled to testify under oath June 3 before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Don’t miss it.   The post In COVID-19 Oversight, House Republicans Deliver a Win for Accountability appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Sen. Ted Cruz grilled U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn on Wednesday about a case centering on a serial child rapist during a judicial confirmation hearing. Netburn, who was nominated for a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, was one of five judges testifying at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz, R-Texas, started by asking Netburn if political ideology mattered more than individual rights. “I don’t believe you, and I think this case demonstrates that you are willing to subjugate the rights of individuals to satisfy your political ideology,” Cruz said when Netburn claimed her political views “didn’t matter at all.” “This case involves a male defendant who raped a nine-year-old boy. Was he guilty of that?” Cruz asked. “Yes, the petitioner pled guilty to that,” Netburn responded. Biden’s nominee to be the judge for the Southern District of New York, Sarah Netburn, is an absolute radical. She puts ideology before safety when it comes to housing biological men in women’s prisons.When the Bureau of Prisons WARNED against housing a convicted serial child… pic.twitter.com/4QcMNUbAqC— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) May 22, 2024 Cruz referred to a case where Justine Shelby, a biological male who identifies as female, filed a suit to force the federal Bureau of Prisons to assign him to a women’s prison following a federal conviction on child pornography charges. Netburn ruled that Shelby should be transferred to a women’s prison. Cruz then got Netburn to confirm that the transgender inmate had also pled guilty to raping a 17-year-old girl, before questioning her about an August 2022 ruling ordering the Bureau of Prisons to transfer the biologically male inmate to a women’s facility. “This individual, 6-foot-2, biologically a man, a minute ago, you said that when this man decided that he was a she, you said this individual was, I wrote it down, ‘sober and entirely a female,’” Cruz said. “That phrase struck me as remarkable. Did this individual have male genitalia?” Netburn claimed that she was referring to the inmate being “hormonally a female,” and admitted that the inmate still retained male genitals after Cruz pressed her on the issue. “So you took a 6-foot-2 serial rapist, serial child rapist, with male genitalia, and he said, ‘You know, I’d like to be in a women’s prison,” Cruz responded. “And your answer was, ‘That sounds great to me.’” “Let me ask you something, the other women in that prison, do they have any rights?” Cruz asked. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Cruz Asks Biden Judge Nominee: Why Did You Order Male Trans ‘Serial Child Rapist’ to Be Housed in Women’s Prison? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Fauci Proves That the FOIA System Is Broken

Vibe Shift Afoot?

Mexico’s baking heatwave and desperate drought are so severe that they're causing monkeys to drop dead out of trees. Worse still, temperatures are expected to climb even further in the next few weeks ahead. At least 138 howler monkeys have been found dead in the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco since May 16, according to the Associated Press (AP). Many others have been found seriously ill. “They arrived in critical condition, with dehydration and fever. They were as limp as rags. It was heatstroke,” Dr Sergio Valenzuela, a local veterinarian who’s been working to save the animals, told the AP.“They were falling out of the trees like apples. They were in a state of severe dehydration, and they died within a matter of minutes,” added wildlife biologist Gilberto Pozo.On Monday, Mexico's environment ministry acknowledged the mass-death of animals in Tabasco and Chiapas, two southern Mexican states, although they suggest the cause of the fatalities was not yet clear.“To date, various hypotheses are shared about the reason for these deaths, such as heat stroke, dehydration, malnutrition, or fumigation of crops with pesticides, so studies will also be carried out to determine the cause,” reads the statement. A Mantled howler pictured in happier times.Image credit: mantled howler/Shutterstock.comHowler monkeys are the loudest land animals on the planet, notorious for their deep hollering vocalizations that can travel for 4.8 kilometers (3 miles). There are at least 15 recognized species of howler monkeys, all of which are native to the forests of Central and South America. The species primarily being impacted by the extreme weather in Mexico appears to be the mantled howler monkey (Alouatta palliata), which is listed as vulnerable to extinction by the IUCN Red List.While these creatures are well-adapted to tropical temperatures, this latest spate of heat is proving too much. And it isn’t only wildlife that’s feeling the burn. At least 26 people have died from heat-related causes between March 17 and May 11.In early May this year, record-breaking temperatures were reported in 10 Mexican cities, including the capital – but the worst could be yet to come. During late May and early June, temperatures in parts of Mexico are set to reach 45°C (113°F)."In the next 10 to 15 days, the country will experience the highest temperatures ever recorded," researchers from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) said in a statement on May 22.The researchers said the presence of El Niño, which is known for its warming influence, is giving the heatwave an extra boost. Simultaneously, they suspect that temperatures have been further hiked by climate change.

We have drawn heart symbols for centuries as a sign of our affection and love but where did the heart shape come from since it looks nothing like our hearts? Read more about the differences between the anatomical heart and the heart symbol here.

NASA has successfully tested a positioning system on the Moon that will allow for the safer navigation of rovers and humans on the lunar surface. The test, conducted in February, was part of Intuitive Machine's Odysseus mission. Called Lunar Node 1 (LN-1), the beacon was turned on for 30 total minutes and showcased how it can be used to find where one is on the surface.LN-1 verifies the position of individuals with other sources in the network such as spacecraft in orbits, ground stations, or even other individuals. The system conducted two 15-minute transmissions and the signal was successfully locked to NASA’s Deep Space Network. The team was able to receive telemetry and navigation measurements from it.        IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.“We’ve lit a temporary beacon on the lunar shore,” Evan Anzalone, LN-1 principal investigator at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said in a statement. “Now, we seek to deliver a sustainable local network – a series of lighthouses that point the way for spacecraft and ground crews to safely, confidently spread out and explore.”Odysseus had some trouble landing, as it reached the surface at a funny angle. This led to cutting down the originally planned time for testing LN-1 from 10 hours a day across the whole mission to just 30 minutes in total. Still, LN-1 actually provided critical backup for the mission onboard navigation system, showing that this tech is up to the task.The team envisions a network of lunar nodes that can monitor the “traffic” around and on the Moon. Together with systems like the Vikram retroreflector tested last year, and other initiatives from NASA and other agencies, the system will become part of a larger LunaNet. And this tech might, in the future, be key to the exploration of Mars. The Moon is about one light-second away; if the position comes exclusively from Earth, signals to and from take just a couple of seconds to reach astronauts that need navigation. On Mars, we’d be looking at 20 minutes of delays, on average.“That’s a very long time to wait for a spacecraft pilot making a precision orbital adjustment, or humans traversing uncharted Martian landscapes,” Anzalone said. “LN-1 can make lighthouse beacons of every explorer, vehicle, temporary or long-term camp, and site of interest we send to the Moon and to Mars.”Let's look forward to more tests of these systems, hopefully with some humans involved in the future Artemis missions.

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Click to Skip Ahead Benefits Issues Oxtail Meat Alternatives to Bones One of the most common associations we have when we think of dogs is a dog with a bone. Years ago, it was common to just hand over any old bone to your dog, but today, we know this isn’t always a good idea. But what about oxtail bones? Oxtail bones may be safe for some dogs, but this depends on your dog’s size and eating habits. Cooked oxtail bones should also never be given to your dog as there is a substantial risk of the bone splintering and becoming a choking or obstruction hazard. We’ll give you more information about the benefits of oxtail bones for your dog as well as the potential dangers for you to be aware of. How Are Oxtail Bones Beneficial? Oxtail bones are the tails of cattle and can be purchased as a cross-section or whole. They are typically found with a thick and large bone in the middle surrounded by meat and fat. Some of the benefits of oxtail bones are: Keeps them occupied: Chewing away on an oxtail bone can also help occupy a dog. This can be a great way to keep them mentally occupied, particularly if they engage in behaviors from anxiety, such as excessive licking or pacing. Nutrients: Oxtail bones can provide some beneficial nutrients, and it doesn’t hurt that dogs love them! Theycontain fat and protein and provide your dog with sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, and other minerals. However, these benefits only translate when oxtail is used as a dietary supplement (for example, if it is ground and mixed in a dog’s diet). What Are the Issues With Giving Dogs Oxtail Bones? For the most part, giving a dog an oxtail bone can be beneficial in some ways, but there are some pretty significant issues as well. Small Breeds Small dogs shouldn’t be given oxtail bones, and in some cases, they shouldn’t be given any bones at all. Small or toy dogs, particularly those with small jaws and softer teeth, shouldn’t be given oxtail bones. They are better off with something like chicken necks. Additionally, brachycephalic breeds have small jaw structures, which can lead to dental issues like overlapping and overcrowded teeth. Image Credit: Grayson Schmidt, Shutterstock Cooked Bones It’s never okay to give your dog a cooked bone as the bone dries out and becomes more brittle through the cooking process. This means it’s quite easy for the bone to splinter, which can damage the dog’s teeth, gums, throat, and gastrointestinal tract. Poultry bones and fish bones are amongst the worst culprits. Additionally, many of the seasonings we use on meat can be toxic for dogs. You’ll want to avoid giving your dog any bones cooked in seasonings or any food off your plate. Raw Bones While raw bones are the best option, there is still a risk of bacteria causing Salmonella infection, which can be spread to us. This is a serious disease that isn’t terribly common in dogs, but there’s the potential when you’re not cooking the bone. If your dog exhibits any of the following signs after chewing on a raw bone, you should bring your dog to the vet immediately: Diarrhea Fever Vomiting Weight loss Dehydration Rapid heart rate Generally speaking though, the risk of such infections is very rare for healthy dogs that are offered human-grade oxtail bones. Image Credit: Zontica, Shutterstock Tooth and Gum Damage If you don’t choose the right bone size for your dog, there’s a risk of tooth breakage and damage to the dog’s gums. Not only is the wrong size of bone a problem, but damage can occur with even an appropriately sized bone. The gums might get punctured, or they could break some teeth while gnawing. Jaw Damage Some dogs can potentially damage their jaws by trying to fit their mouth around the bone. Round bones, like oxtail, can also potentially become stuck around your dog’s lower jaw behind the lower canine teeth. Image Credit: Yavdat, Shutterstock Choking Risk Choking is one of the most significant reasons why some veterinarians are against dogs chewing on bones. This point also depends again on the bone’s size and how your dog tends to eat. Remember to always monitor your dog anytime you give them anything to chew on. If your dog is a careful chewer of food and chew toys, they might be okay with a bone. But dogs that gulp their food down should probably avoid bones, as this is when choking can occur. When chewing on an oxtail bone, some dogs might swallow it whole, where it could get stuck in the throat. Or the splinters of the bone could make their way into the intestinal tract and stomach, where they could cause damage. Obstruction When a dog chews off a large piece of bone and swallows it, they won’t be able to digest it. This undigested piece of bone might result in the obstruction of the digestive tract, often referred to as a gastrointestinal obstruction. Such dogs need medical care from a veterinarian (which may involve surgery). Image Credit: Goldfish Studio, Shutterstock Can You Feed Your Dog Oxtail Meat? As long as the bone is removed before giving it to your dog and it hasn’t been cooked with any seasonings or oils, oxtail meat on its own is a tasty treat for most dogs. Don’t forget that things like onions and garlic are quite toxic for dogs. They’ll enjoy the cooked or raw meat without any special preparation. You can also consider making bone broth for your dog following dog-specific recipes. Image Credit: Food Impressions, Shutterstock Alternatives to Bones Judging from the opinions of many the FDA and the long list of risks associated with bones, giving your dog an oxtail bone, or any bone for that matter, might not be worth it. Many dogs do successfully chew on bones without any issues, but in some cases you might need alternatives. Veterinary Oral Health Council-approved rawhide is an alternative chew that you can try for your dog. Bear in mind that the same rules apply to any chewing treats as they do to bones. You want to ensure they are the right size for your dog, and you should monitor your dog at all times when they’re chewing on it. However, hides might not be appropriate for all dogs, and further input from your veterinarian is advised prior to considering them for your pet. You can also try some dental chews as a means to keep your dog’s teeth healthy and clean. And regardless of what your dog is chewing, always supervise while they are gnawing away. If you notice large pieces of bone or chew that have come loose, take any pieces away from your dog before they swallow them. Conclusion Whether or not you give your dog an oxtail bone, consider speaking to your vet before you try it. They might have an opinion on this and can provide you with feedback as to whether they are a safe treat for your dog. If you decide to try out an oxtail bone on your dog, ensure you purchase it from stores that have them prepared and cut very specifically for dogs. Remember to always keep an eye on your dog while they are chewing anything. The chew should be taken from them if it becomes too small, if you notice any blood on the bone and around their mouth, if your dog chews/eats very quickly, or if your dog seems to be in discomfort or pain while chewing. Sources PetMD – Brachycephalic Preventative Vet – Toxic for dogs PetMD – Salmonella infection PetMD – Choking PetMD – Intestinal blockage Hepper – Recipes FDA – Experts https://www.thelabradorsite.com/can-dogs-eat-oxtail-bones/ https://www.thegoodypet.com/can-dogs-eat-oxtail-bones-cooked-or-raw https://dogcare.dailypuppy.com/can-large-bone-hurt-small-dog-6505.html Featured Image Credit: Mironov Vladimir, Shutterstock The post Can Dogs Eat Oxtail Bones? Vet Approved Safety Guide appeared first on Pet Keen.