best tasting dry dog food

What’s the Best Tasting Dry Dog Food for Your Pet?

Dogs have different tastes, just like people. What flavor or texture that appeals to one dog may not appeal to another dog. Some dogs prefer dry kibble, some semi-moist kibble, and others canned food. Some prefer foods that have certain aromas and other dogs don’t seem to care either way and will eat just about anything. Dog owners commonly ask about what is the best tasting dry dog food.

Recommendations for Dry Dog Food

Good quality dry dog food can be good for dogs of all sizes and life stages. Recommendations include:

  1. Trust. Find a company you trust that provides consistent high-quality foods made in the USA. It is ideal for the company to source quality ingredients from the USA with quality control measures and no recalls. Find a company that makes you feel good about what you are feeding your dog. You may want to do your own research or review our recommendations below.
  2. Quality. Whatever dog you feed needs to conform to AAFCO standards. The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) is an organization that publishes regulations for nutritional adequacy of “complete and balanced” dog foods. Diets that fulfill the AAFCO regulations will state on the label: “formulated to meet the AAFCO Dog Food Nutrient Profile for…(a given life stage). This indicates the manufacturer is following the national consensus recommendations for dog foods.
  3. Life Stage. Pick the food for your dog’s life stage. This includes puppies, adults, breeding, working dogs, and senior pets.
  4. Feed to Optimize Health. It is important to feed to maintain your dog at an ideal weight and avoid obesity. If your dog is overweight, a weight-reducing diet plan is recommended to optimize your dog health. Don’t over or under feed. You can use the guidelines on the bag as a baseline to determine how much to feed your dog but monitor your dog weight and adjust accordingly to maintain and ideal weight. Some dogs need more calories and others less.
  5. Water. As part of a healthy diet, provide plenty of fresh clean water at all times. Carefully clean and wash out the water dishes every other day.

For more information about the best recommendations for feeding your dog – go to Nutrition in Dogs.

How to Choose the Right Food for Your Dog’s Diet

After researching various dog food companies, we have found the following food brands to be both good quality and highly palpable:

How to Tell if Your Dog Likes It

Pet owners want to feed a food their dogs’ food that they really like. One way that you can test if your dog likes a food is by the blind brown bag taste test.

How to Do a Blind Dry Dog Food Taste Test On Your Dog

This test goes like this:

  1. Obtain food samples you want to test. Some pet stores will sell or provide free samples for you to try.
  2. Remove your dog from the room where you are going to test the food.
  3. Place paper on the floor in the form of a long rectangle.
  4. Place small samples of each food (1 to 2 tablespoons) spaced out on the paper 6 to 8 inches apart. Label the paper with the name of the food above the samples.
  5. Open the door for your dog to come in the room. Do not speak, pet or stimulate your dog. Allow your dog to find the food.
  6. Note your dog’s preferences. Some dogs will smell all samples then go back and eat their favorite first.
  7. This test works best for “Picky” dogs. Some dogs love to eat and will eat anything and everything. If that is the case, choose a company you believe produces high-quality food and stick with it.

How to Change Your Dog’s Food If you decide to change your dog’s food – make sure you do it right which is gradual. Any food change can cause vomiting and diarrhea in some dogs. Get our tips on the best way to change foods to avoid problems. Go to: How To Switch Your Dog’s Food: Vet Recommendations.

We hope these tips help you choose the best tasting dry dog food.

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