Stella & Chewy'sFreeze Dried Dog Food for Adult Dogs, Duck and Goose Dinner

My dogs loved these! You can give them as they are or by adding water, mine preferred them 'as is' as they always have plenty of fresh drinking water available.Highly nutritious and a complete diet. Great product!

Dog not keen on it

♦Meet Wrigley: the 4-year-old 7lb Maltese who has us wrapped around his fluffy paws. Wrigley has no known allergies.♦SummaryWrigley has been quite selective when it comes to food ever since we adopted him 2.5 years ago. It’s my opinion (and I’m not in the veterinary field) that Stella & Chewy’s is one of the highest quality commercial dog foods available; the ingredients are second to none. It was also the first real food we offered to Wrigley that he would eat right away without any encouragement. For a short period of time, we fed Wrigley exclusively Stella & Chewy’s brand freeze-dried raw food, but now I also buy Orijen and Primal. This would be an easy 5-stars BUT… (see my comment below for explanation).•IMPORTANT: A negative review mentioned bone fragments in the food. I actually found one today, so I wanted to mention this as well. I do crumble the patty and remember having found fragments previously (not too often, but more than once), so I will be specifically looking for them in the future and I would recommend that you do the same. I have not noticed bone fragments in the other freeze-dried raw patties Wrigley has tried from Orijen or Primal.♦Our Journey to Freeze-Dried Raw Food•Food 1: We purchased a bag of mid-priced kibble from a well-known pet store on the night we adopted him. Wrigley refused to eat it, except if I hand fed him the pieces, one by one. It would sit in the bowl until the next day, even when he was fed nothing else.•Food 2: Wrigley was recovering from knee surgery and our trainer recommended the Natural Balance Lamb Roll because we could sneak in his liquid medication that he wouldn’t take any other way. He snarfed it down at every meal. Before ordering it for the third time on Amazon, I read the reviews and realized that the ingredients held very little nutritional value, including sugar towards the top. I would possibly buy this again as a rare treat for Wrigley, but never a full meal.•Food 3: After seeing commercials for Blue Buffalo, I purchased a bag of their Small Breed kibble. Wrigley would only eat it if I hand fed him a piece or two at a time. Furthermore, the mix has two shapes and he would avoid eating one of them.•Food 4: Next was Blue Buffalo Divine Delights, mini containers of wet stew-like food. I would stock up on all of the flavors when they were on sale for a buck. Sometimes Wrigley would eat the whole container. Mostly he would spit out the chunks of potatoes and carrots on the floor and sometimes not even finish the rest of the meat and gravy. I’m not as environmentally conscious as I’d like to be, but going through so much plastic waste bothered me.•Enter Stella & Chewy’s: sometime during all of this, we were given a sample patty of Stella & Chewy’s Duck Duck Goose Freeze-Dried Raw Food at a Farmer’s Market. Wrigley is my first dog and I never even heard of this kind of food. I put it in a bin with all of his treats and forgot about it for a while. Eventually, I gave the patty to Wrigley and he devoured it. I thought the texture was gross (thinking about ground up animals) and didn’t want to touch it with my bare hands, but Wrigley loved it.•Food 5: A local pet store somehow convinced me to try the frozen Stella & Chewy’s raw food. They even said that feeding him high quality food like this would eliminate his tear stains. Wrigley refused to eat the hamburger patty-like raw food that needed to be kept frozen.•Never Going BackAt this point, I bought a full-size bag of Stella & Chewy’s freeze-dried raw food. Wrigley loved it and I decided I was never going back to lesser-quality food. Wrigley has bad knees and had surgery for luxated patella (dislocated kneecap, a condition common in small dogs).He is still very young, and we want him to be as healthy as possible so he will not suffer as much pain from his knee condition and eventual arthritis. We want him to enjoy a long life with us that includes lots of snuggling and playing. The vet also emphasized the importance of keeping him at a healthy weight to avoid additional stress on his joints. Feeding him size-appropriate portions of high-quality food helps keep him that way. Selfishly, I also hope that paying more for food now will mean spending less on expensive vet bills in the future.♦Stella & Chewy’sWrigley has enjoyed many of the Stella & Chewy’s freeze-dried raw varieties: Duck Duck Goose*, Phenomenal Pheasant, Surf n’ Turf, Dandy Lamb Dinner*, Absolutely Rabbit, and possibly more that I’m forgetting. Asterisks denote Wrigley’s Favorites.Wrigley weighs about 7-8 lbs. When I feed him freeze-dried raw, he gets one patty per meal. We crush it into little pieces and put it in a bowl for him. Some people mix in warm water, but we give it to him plain.I found a site called DogFoodAdvisor and Stella & Chewy’s Freeze-Dried Dog Food is given the highest available rating. They evaluate dog foods based off the ingredients listed on the package (not actual samples) and are far more knowledgeable than I am.&Diams;Cons(iderations)•It’s very important to give the dog access to plenty of water when feeding freeze-dried raw.•Stella & Chewy’s recalled several varieties of food for listeria on December 10, 2015, several days before I am writing this. It didn’t affect the Duck Duck Goose Freeze-Dried for Dogs. That’s not something I want to read, but it won’t stop me from choosing Stella & Chewy’s in the future.•Expensive – especially for larger dogs.•Despite what the pet store employees told me, feeding Wrigley exclusively top-quality food (except for occasional treats) has done nothing to reduce his tear stains.&Diams;What Wrigley Eats NowFor a period of time, Wrigley was eating Stella & Chewy’s freeze-dried raw for every meal. Please see comment below why we purchase additional brands as well now.To save money, Wrigley eats Orijen kibble for his morning meal. Orijen is the first brand of kibble that he will often (but not always) eat right after we pour it in his bowl. We’ve purchased these varieties: Adult Dog http://amzn.com/B00BK2XSL0, Six Fish http://amzn.com/B00A4KFOS4, and Regional Red http://amzn.com/B00BK2XLKS. I believe them to be of equal high quality to Stella & Chewy’s.Wrigley gets a freeze-dried raw patty for his night time meal. I’ve recently been buying mostly Orijen brand freeze-dried raw but I also buy Primal brand and Stella & Chewy’s occasionally, depending upon where I purchase his food. Wrigley likes Orijen and Primal just as much as Stella & Chewy’s and the quality is on par. We’ve purchased these Orijen varieties: Adult Dog http://amzn.com/B00EB7N924, Regional Red http://amzn.com/B00E5A7S6A, and Tundra http://amzn.com/B00E5A7U2C. These are the Primal ones that we’ve bought: Lamb http://amzn.com/B00BC4BIKE and Duck http://amzn.com/B00B68V7RA. I think Orijen is a Canadian company and Primal is based in San Francisco. Primal was kind enough to send me a sample of several of their varieties for Wrigley to try.

I feed my dog these exclusively. He has a problem tummy and these are the only things that don’t bother him. He is especially fond of the Lamb and the Duck. He weighs about 22 pounds and goes through a large bag every two weeks. A bit pricey but worth it!

The way this product was mishandled by the delivery driver left me with a bag that was 3/4 crumbs and only a few of the complete freeze dried discs. I’m sure the high temperature went far higher than recommended by you. I cancelled my subscription that I feed to 4 dogs. I tried one feeding from this bag and had very loose mucus stools on all 4 dogs. It’s a shame because my Biewer Terrier Dolly has eaten this since 4 weeks old and she is now7 months old. She refused to eat what was in that bag after 1 meal. I’m nervous about how it was handled and would future orders be handled the same way?SincerelyJudith Dawson