Fit Friday: Food

Disclaimer: We were given this kibble to try in exchange for our honest review. We were not compensated in any other way. Links in this blog are not affiliate links, and we get nothing by you clicking on them.

Koira chilling on the bed with Theodore Trex cleaning a paw in the foreground

This month, Chewy.com offered us the opportunity to do a month-long review of Rachael Ray's new dog food, Peak. After checking out the ingredients to make sure it is something I am comfortable feeding my dogs, I enthusiastically agreed. I firmly believe that variety is the spice of life, and that that applies to dog food as much as to anything else. I like to switch up what food my dogs eat both to give them different tastes and textures to experience and to make sure they are getting a good long term balance of nutrients. Plus, it gives me the opportunity to take advantage of sales when available for the various foods that we feed.

Peak is currently available in two flavors, Open Range (beef/venison/lamb) and Woodlands (turkey/duck/quail). We chose to try out the Open Range recipe, mostly because I tend towards red meats for my dogs when the option is there. In raw feeding, red meat is important, so I have the tendency to bring that mindset to choosing a kibble as well. The two flavors are the same price for Peak so that doesn't factor into it, though with some other kibbles I've noticed that beef, pork, and lamb tend to cost less than the poultry options.

Peak kibbles with a one-cup red scoop in the bag

Our first impressions on opening up the Peak bag were overall good. The kibble has a light smell, not at all overwhelming. It doesn't smell greasy or rancid (some foods seem to smell rancid even if they are within date- I obviously avoid any food that smells like that). The kibble size is pretty standard for a higher end food- not tiny, not huge.

Trying Peak for the first time, Ptera was excited and interested. She is such a food hound, though, there are few foods she isn't like that with (such a difference from when I first brought her home!). She was willing to work for the kibbles by themselves, or using a food toy to eat. At 10 lbs, she is likely on the smaller end of dogs who would be comfortable eating this food just due to the kibble size. She has to crunch up each kibble, but is able to eat it easily enough. Some smaller dogs may not care for it, though, if they have trouble with medium kibble sizes. Other 10 lb or so dogs would likely do fine.

Koira was also enthusiastic on trying Peak for the first time. She happily worked through a food toy for it, and did tricks in exchange for single kibbles. At 40 lbs, the kibble size is a non-factor for her.

We've just started out trying the Peak, so these really are our first thoughts on it. So far, so good. We'll update again after a few weeks, and again at the end of our month-long trial.