What should you feed your dog… Kibble, canned, or raw?

Yes, walking a dog and keeping it fit both mentally and physically is very important. However, the best thing you can do for your dog is to feed it the best and most nutritious food possible within your budget. 

It is the same with human food, we can sometimes think quantity is enough, but if you want your dog to live a long and healthy life, you need to concentrate on the quality as much as the quantity. 

There seems to be a vast range of brands that you can buy dog food from, and each brand has multiple products with their own “unique” selling point. It can be very confusing, and you cannot even rely entirely on your local Vet for this information, as there is a possibility that they will recommend what they are selling in their clinic, which they will profit from. 

Therefore, you must do your research and experiment with your dog because you might think that Raw is the best way to feed them, but the dog might prefer Kibble… although that is unlikely. 

You will face three main choices on how you should feed them, which I will detail below but remember that you don’t necessarily have to stick to the same choice forever. There is nothing wrong with mixing it up a bit. For example, you could choose to feed your puppy or pooch canned food during the week for cost reasons but give them the generally more expensive raw food at the weekend or if they deserve a treat day. 

2. Wet food aka Canned

Canned food is, well… just how it sounds. It should be dog food that contains everything needed for a balanced diet in one can. 

Pros

• Long-lasting: Canning is a well-known and effective way to preserve food. It will last as long as an unopened bag of Kibble. 
• Closer to the real thing: canning works by vacuum sealing the food so it is not exposed to bacteria, etc. Therefore, canned food looks, tastes, and feels more like real food than Kibble does. 
• More moisture: canned food is often around 70% water, whereas Kibble is about 10%. This means dogs will get more water from canned food, meaning they will not have to drink as much. 
• Palatable: canned food is easier to eat than Kibble, especially for elderly dogs, and is less likely to cause bloat. Plus, as it is closer to real food when compared to Kibble, indeed it must taste better. 

Cons

• Large dogs: for larger dogs, it might not be practical to feed them canned food, as they will need multiple cans per meal and per day. 
• Nutrient density: per gram, there are more protein, vitamins, and minerals in Kibble as it takes a lot of food volume to dehydrate into a nugget. 
• Fillers: like with Kibble, you are generally buying a product filled with preservatives, unnecessary amounts of carbs, and just cheap ingredients. You might buy a think you have bought beef dog food and see lots of lumps of beef, but at best, it is poor-quality beef leftovers. At worse, it will be some soy and corn concoction made to look like beef. 
• Dental health: canned food is often wet and soft, meaning there is nothing to chew, so teeth and gums can suffer. 

3. Raw food, aka their Ancestral diet

They are commonly known as The Prey Diet or the BARF Diet. This is feeding them mainly raw meat and bones. This presumes that eating an ancestral diet is beneficial for health, which makes sense. 

Pros

• It is real food. If you have a large dog, you can give him a whole raw chicken or raw fish to eat… bones and all. Please do not feed them cooked bones!
• Some companies sell raw food in complete packages. Usually 80% meat, 10% offal, and 10% bones. This ensures your dog is getting a fully balanced meal. 
• While humans have pushed along a dog’s evolution with selective breeding, what has barely changed is their digestive system. If you feed dogs similar to what they would have eaten throughout their development, they are more likely to be healthy. 
• Nutrient density: this is by far the most nutrient-dense and high-quality way to feed your pooch. Raw meat alone is enough for a dog to be very healthy; you can add in some fruit and veg if the dog likes them or as a “treat,” but they are not an essential component of a raw fed diet… meat is!

Cons

• The most expensive option. 
• Storage: The bigger the dog, the bigger the freezer you will need. You will need a freezer because you will either buy prepacked frozen raw food or if you buy fresh meat, you should freeze it for a couple of weeks to kill any bacteria present.
• Balance: The easiest way is to purchase prepacked complete meals. However, if you decide that you want to source everything fresh, you will need to calculate how much meat, offal, and bone you give them. This might not be very clear for some people. 
• Short-term digestive distress: if you have a dog on Kibble or canned and switch them to raw, they may experience digestive distress like diarrhea or constipation for a couple of weeks until they adapt to eating proper real food.