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Picture of a Boston Terrier to illustrate best food for your dog

The best food for your dog

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The best food for your dog is the one they’ll eat and thrive on. 

The last couple of years have seen many new options, both brands and different forms of dog food. It used to be either canned or dry kibble. Now the choices include raw, frozen or freeze-dried, fresh refrigerated, subscription boxes, various custom-blended mixtures, pouches, containers, bags, cans, grain or none, percentage of protein, carnivore or vegetarian, etc.

And the commercials we see touting the various brands and forms are aimed straight at our guilt triggers. Don’t you want to give your dog the “best” food with the “healthiest” ingredients? They aim right at the soft spots.

First things first

When choosing your dog’s food, try to remember that your dog really doesn’t care what it looks like. People “eat first with their eyes” but dogs don’t. Their most important sense when choosing food is the smell. And the smells that attract dogs generally aren’t all that appealing to people. That expensive container that looks like a delicious stew is made to attract your eye – not your dog’s.

Does that mean you should choose the ugliest, stinkiest dog food available? It means that you should buy dog food based on logic, not emotion.

Dog food journey

Personally, we feed our dogs a mixture of home-made and kibble. It was a long and painful process to figure out what was best for us and our dogs. For training, we use stinky treats our dogs adore.

Picture of a Boston Terrier to illustrate best food for your dog

We switched because of Booker (pictured), Fran’s now 10-year-old Boston Terrier. If you’ve been following us for a while, you know that Booker is “special,” not in a good way. One of his issues is a very sensitive gut. For the first couple years he never had a “normal” poop, was incredibly gassy, and seemed uncomfortable.

We tried all kinds of foods for him. And in keeping with the veterinarian’s advice, introduced each option slowly. Nothing seemed to help. From different proteins, grains, “sensitive stomach” choices, canned, dry, consultations with a nutritionist. His tummy just wasn’t happy.

What worked

Finally, a friend of ours whose business was custom-made dog food hit on the right combination of ingredients and format that worked for Booker. The difference was life-changing for all of us. She figured out that Booker is a dog who can’t tolerate raw food, or certain proteins, must have vegetables, and limited grains.

And then she went out of business. That’s when we started making our dog’s food. We didn’t have a choice. If we wanted to use what worked for Booker, we had to make it ourselves. 

Luckily, our friend did give us the recipes she used. So now, once every month, we devote a day to shopping, chopping, blending, portioning, and freezing dog food. 

The rest of the story

When we started making food, we were also traveling quite a bit. Our dogs always came along on any trips. As insurance, we decided to keep our dogs accustomed to a readily-available commercial dog food. If we got stuck on the road, or something happened with the home-made food, we wanted to be sure our dogs would be okay.

We actually wouldn’t wish our dog food adventures on anyone. Food-making day is messy and stinky. But it works for us and our dogs. 

Choose your dog’s food by the results you get. If your dog loves their food, they’re healthy, eyes bright, eager to eat, happy to play, able to sleep comfortably, you’re doing fine. 

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What’s the best dog food

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What’s the best dog food?

Every once in a while we check the search engines to see what dog owners are asking the most questions about. With our decades of experience as pet-supply retailers, dog trainers, and, most important, dog owners, we want to address your biggest concerns.

An overwhelming percentage of dog owners are interested in finding the best dog food at the best value for their dogs. Many people became concerned when a rare heart issue in dogs had a possible link to grain-free foods.

Building awareness

best dog food can be homemade like this picture of batches in the oven
Four dog food batches ready to bake

We have seen more people interested in making their dog’s food. It’s certainly a way of controlling what your dog eats, although making sure they get complete nutrition can be a bit tricky. Dogs don’t have quite the same nutritional needs as people, and their “food pyramid” looks different from ours. 

Our own five dogs eat a mixture of commercially-prepared and homemade food. Because at least one of our dogs can’t tolerate all-commercial. And we want to keep all of them accustomed to it, just in case we run out of the homemade. It’s a compromise that works for us. Our dogs are thriving.

Do what works

Dog food is such a controversial subject that we even hesitate to talk about it with our “dog friends.” Everyone seems to have such strong opinions: raw vs. cooked, homemade vs. commercial, grain vs. grain free, wet vs. dry, etc. If there are two options, people will disagree over them. 

The best advice we’ve ever gotten was to go slow and see what works for you and your family, including the dog. There is no “right” answer for every dog. Every dog owner has to balance nutrition, budget, convenience, and, perhaps most importantly, what the dog likes and will eat.

Catering to Phydeaux

No dog will deliberately starve. Truly. If they get hungry enough, they’ll eat what you put in their bowl. But few people have the patience to wait them out. Seeing your dog refusing to eat for a couple of days makes devoted dog owners crazy. 

Whether we’ve been lucky, or disciplined, we’re not quite sure. But we’ve never had to deal with a finicky dog. We thought we had one once, but we were mistaken. We’ve always followed the practice of leaving the food bowl down for ten minutes. After that, it gets picked up. Didn’t finish? There’ll be another meal in a few hours. Or tomorrow. 

Free feeding

The one food subject that all dog professionals agree on is that “free feeding” isn’t a good idea. That’s when you leave a bowl of kibble down all the time and the dog eats what they want when they want. 

While it may be convenient for some circumstances, it’s not ideal for several reasons. It makes potty training more difficult since the dog isn’t on a set consumption schedule. If there’s more than one animal in the house, it’s impossible to know who’s eating what and how much. Not to mention the food’s accessibility to pests and contaminants. And, if someone stops eating, their condition has to visibly change before you notice something’s wrong. 

With scheduled feeding times, you know immediately if someone’s not eating. And you know after a couple of missed meals it may be time to visit the vet.

What to feed your dog

So what’s the best dog food? It’s the food your dog will eat. That you can afford to feed them. And that provides the nutrition they need to thrive. Dog food shouldn’t be a source of worry or guilt. Do the best you know how to do. Give dogs healthy snacks. Avoid the foods that are toxic for them (chocolate, grapes, onions). 

And share your popcorn. We’ve never met a dog who didn’t love movie night.