Not Another Dog Food Review: Our continued quest to feed our dog well

What do Kentucky bluegrass, molasses, spinach, cherries, food coloring, and mice have in common?

How about dog poop, subscription boxes, and cornstarch?

Stick with me for a minute… promise, this is going somewhere…

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If you’ve been around here for a while, you know our struggles with Coop’s health go back seven to seven-and-a-half years.

He’s eight.

The gist, distilled: As a puppy, his skin bled. He suffered from chronic ear infections. He tremored all the time. His belly… um… struggled, if you know what I mean. It took years, but we nailed down a bunch of food sensitivities that caused the bulk of his problems. The rest? Environmental allergens.

Over the course of those years, we tried many diets and foods. Ultimately, we cooked for Cooper. His skin and ears cleared–mostly but we’re still dealing with the environmental stuff. Then, The Honest Kitchen launched a pet food that nearly matched what we were cooking, so we switched. It was so much faster, so much easier, and–yeah, it’s expensive–but so much cheaper than what we were cooking. He has an ear infection once a year, and he still struggles with his belly at times, but we were doing fine.

Then, earlier this year, I attended SuperZoo and met Affordable Pet Test. I’m going to chronicle the entire experience in another post because holy moly, but I sent in Cooper’s fur to have it checked for intolerances. And wouldn’t you know it… one of the ingredients in his food was on the list. (That MIGHT be due to overexposure to that ingredient, btw, which is why I need to write the full post about this, so stay tuned!!)

I know many of you struggle with your dog’s allergies. They’re prevalent, chronic, painful, frustrating… I hate when Coop chews at his feet, and I really hate when we have to take care of his ears because after so many infections, he’s a tad, well, I’d like to call it “touchy” but it’s more like “Tasmanian devil-y.”

So, when I saw his results–three pages of them–I wanted to cry. I might’ve cried. Not because there were so many things but because it meant back to the drawing board with his food and feeding.

You know that feeling, right?

Heartbreaking. And frustrating.

I also know I’m lucky beyond belief to work in the pet industry. I get access to a lot of insider info and products that I know many folks aren’t aware of, which is why I strive to cover as much as I can, at least of what’s valuable. And we got to try a new food…

This food, you guys?

It’s valuable.

As promised, though, this isn’t a food review. This is instead about what dog food isn’t and shouldn’t be.

Dog food–all food, really–should be fresh and wholesome and natural. Over the past handful of decades, food morphed from that into brightly-colored, artificially-flavored, last-forever-on-the-shelf stuff.

{{This is the funniest take on this particular topic ever–I’ll wait while you go read and laugh.}}

And we’re learning, right? Chronic illnesses, rampant allergies, excessively high rates of cancer even in young people and definitely in our pets, all of it comes back to the quality of what we’re eating and how we’re treating the environment and our bodies. Same for us, same for our pets. We’re learning all of this, and we’re changing. Which is great. It’s awesome! It’s a relief!

Which brings me back to Cooper. Nothing processed worked for him. Ever. So, we home cooked. That didn’t work for us, honestly, because of the massive amounts of time and money it took to do it right. So, we switched to the next closest food.

Well, it was the next closest food.

Now there’s actually a home-cooked pet food you can order online and have it delivered to your door in an insulated box and on dry ice.

This is why this isn’t a food review. I’m not going to go ingredient by ingredient or anything like that. I strongly, highly recommend you do that for yourself because it’s entirely custom to your dog and his lifestyle. (Although, I’d be happy to do that in another post in the future. If you want that, let me know in the comments! I wanted instead to focus on the health benefits of whole, fresh food for today.)

It’s called The Farmer’s Dog, and, you guys, we are so relieved. So, here’s the thing: They currently offer three main formulas. Two don’t work for him and his list of food allergies and intolerances. The third, the beef, has been incredible. You guys are dog people, so you’ll totally get it when I say this: He has the nicest poops of his life! Seriously!

It’s not cheap. It’s slightly more than The Honest Kitchen, so it wasn’t a big shift in our food budget, but you guys know that’s a pricey food. It’s worth it to see his pretty poops! Also, if you have a smaller/less active dog, the cost would be less because it’s based on the size of meals/calories.

As for the cost factor, if you’re interested in trying it out at all and giving it a whirl, here’s your chance to do so at 50% off.

What we’re doing is alternating it with a fish box from THK to keep the cost down and to alternate his proteins, which is still super important to me. But for the ingredients, they’re just food. Like, you can see chunks of carrots and lentils.

All that said, I’m pumped because they’re a super environmentally-responsible company. You might be scratching your head at the “cornstarch” reference in the intro. Well, check this out… this is the insulation:

 

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A post shared by Maggie Marton (@maggiemarton) on Oct 25, 2018 at 9:01am PDT

Why can’t more companies do packaging like this?!?!

The entire thing is recyclable, though the pouches of food have to be taken to a plastic-film-specific drop-off instead of curbside (ours are at Target, Whole Foods, or Market District).

Bottom line: It’s real food for dogs. Which is what they should be eating. (Us too, honestly, but girl-who-ate-tacos-for-dinner-twice-this-week isn’t judging anybody else.)

And, you guys, his belly!!! I can’t emphasize that enough. If you have a dog with food weirdnesses, you KNOW how big that is!

I definitely encourage you to give the 50% off box a try and see how your pup does. I don’t know if this is weird or not (I mean, it is but…) let me know how his poop looks after you feed that first box! 😀

BTW, the thing Kentucky bluegrass, molasses, spinach, cherries, food coloring, and mice all have in common?

Cooper’s allergic.

Guess what grass our backyard has…

Sigh.

One battle at a time. For now, at least we’re winning the battle on his gut health with The Farmer’s Dog!

Questions? Comments? Want more info? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll share as much as I can or get answers to your Qs from the kind folks at The Farmer’s Dog!