Stella and Chewy's Dehydrated Food

For the month of June, I am teaming up with Chewy.com to do a month long food challenge. Both of my dogs will be eating Stella and Chewy's freeze dried food for the entire month, and then I will be posting here a handful of times to let you know how it is going.

First, a little background. Both Koira and Ptera each a rotational diet. Generally, their diet is prey model raw alternated with a decent quality kibble. No kind of strict routine is applied- if I have time and remember, raw food gets defrosted and fed. If I am busy, forget to defrost, or don't have any raw, they eat kibble. So sometimes, they will go a while on one diet or the other. When traveling, I tend to bring along raw for the first night, and kibble or dehydrated raw for the rest of the trip.

Two days' worth of food, bagged by day

Now, I use a handful of different dehydrated and freeze dried treats and foods with my dogs, generally when I get them as samples, but some that I buy for traveling or because my dogs love them. I've never been totally thrilled with dehydrated foods that I've tried, for a variety of reasons, though the dogs always seem to like them well enough.

Koira gets 8 patties, Ptera gets 3 each day

I'm taking a trip this weekend, and while packing dog food, I thought it would be fun to do a quick comparison of the new Stella and Chewy's freeze dried food, and another company's dehydrated food that I have been using when traveling recently. First, the Stella and Chewy's is a much higher percentage of animal products. Almost the entire ingredient list is beef, beef bones, beef heart, beef liver, etc. Since I feed a prey model raw when at home, and don't generally add in fruits or vegetables except as treats or snacks, this suits us great. The other food has a lot of vegetable and fruits added in, which is fine, just farther from what they are used to. 

Alongside the dehydrated food we've been using while traveling, which requires a measuring cup and can be goopy and messy in our travel bowls

Smell wise, the powdered kind we've been using on trips smells more like vegetables and herbs than like meat. The smell might be more pleasant for me, but has made me wonder in the past, since I would expect a more meaty smell from a dog food. The Stella and Chewy's has almost no smell when dry, but when soaked in water, it smells very meaty. I'm not a big fan of the smell, but since it doesn't cling and isn't strong, I don't mind, and I actually like that the food I'm feeding the dogs smells like meat.

Ptera wanted to sneak in for a taste

Overall, with just a few days so far into our month long food trial, I am really liking the Stella and Chewy's food. The dogs seem to enjoy eating it, and I am preferring it to the other dehydrated or freeze dried foods we've tried in the past. It is as easy as kibble (or just slightly more complicated, if I decide to break it up into little bits and soak for 10 minutes before serving), and way easier than whole prey model raw.

I am looking forward to the rest of the month, and seeing how the dogs do going forward.