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Our Waffles, maltipoo, is growing fast and now almost 10 pounds. Now that he's been fully vaccinated (partly from Petco and PetSmart's Bansfield Hospital), we can take him outside on long walks without worry about him getting sick. His standard diet is Blue Buffalo formula for puppies, he hasn't caused any problems. We avoid feeding him human food, but we recently decided to let him lick the marrow of a beef bone. He loves his bone marrow and will go at it for hours. Note that we don't let him eat or repetitively bite the bone, only lick out the marrow.
We purchased the bone from our local butcher. We bought the whole big bone, and had the butcher cut it into small slices, about 2 inches long. To be fair to the butcher for carrying such an exception item, we did eat all the large premium pieces. It was the smaller end pieces we set aside and prepared specifically for the dog at a later time.
Preparation of the bone was quite simple. We only give him one bone per serving. Too kill any bacteria that may have grown on the bone, we decided to flash boil the bone. To do this, we:
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Boiled enough water in a pot to submerge the bone.
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Once the water was boiling, we put the bone in the pot and let it cook for 2 minutes.
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After, we carefully scooped out the bone and put his his feeding bowl (not plastic) and put it out of reach while the bone cooled down.
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When the bone was cool enough for us to easily handle, we put his feeding bowl with the bone on the ground and let him go at it.
Depending on the size of your dog and the size of the bone, it shouldn't take more than a 2-3 hours for him to completely lick out all the marrow. We are very careful to let him enjoy the bone only under supervision. We do not leave him along with the bone, as cow bones are very thick and hard (as you can see in the picture), and it is easy for Waffles (or your small dog) to chip or break his teeth on it.