Product Review: K9 Cuisine and Taste of the Wild

My dogs eat a combination of Kibble and home cooked food. Caffeine, one of my Border Collie mixes, has some environmental allergy issues that include storage mites, so high quality kibble with very low or no grain is best for her. Gage, the rottie mix, has a very sensitive stomach, and is prone toward pancreatitis, which makes better food a better option too.

Until recently Evo and Merrick were in our kibble rotation (with a few others). Proctor and Gamble recently purchased Natura, the manufacturer of Evo, which takes it off the table. Meanwhile, Merrick has so badly mishandled a spate of recalls that they can never be trusted again.

When I attended BlogPaws in April I met Anthony Holloway from K9 Cuisine. We had a great conversation over why he started his company and I had made a mental note to check it out. Mental notes don’t work very well for me. At least I have to lose paper notes. The mental ones just disappear.

Fast forward to early last month, when K9 Cuisine contacts me with an offer to order some complementary food to review. The timing was really good, given the aforementioned issues with two of my favorite foods. Around that same time I was talking with a friend of mine, a vet tech with a new puppy, about food and she mentioned Taste of the Wild and how she thought it was a great food but had a hard time finding it. The name sounded familiar, and I realized that Anthony had mentioned it when were at BlogPaws.

So I ordered some.

The way the offer worked was excellent – I went to the site and ordered just like any other customer, so I was able to see how the website works and how it is shipped to a “regular” client.

The site is superb. The navigation is smooth and it is very easy to find what you are looking for. The search also works very nicely. Food is displayed with a handy set of tabs where you can view ingredients, analysis, feeding instructions and comments from other customers. Everything you need to make an informed decision.

(click to see a larger version)

The shipping was fast. I had the food within a few days. I have since ordered two more bags and they showed up within three (it may have been two, but I’m not sure) days. Shipping is free for orders over $50! So I got 2 bags of kibble shipped to my house in three days for free.

As far as Taste of the Wild goes, well like I said, I have since ordered two more 30 pound bags. The ingredients (you can check them out here) are high quality and all three of my dogs are doing great after a full month on it.

So far the salmon, the bison, and the fowl, have all passed the Buddha taste test — which is not easy to do. Buddha is not a picky eater at all, but he does have an interesting way of telling us how much he likes a food. If it’s O.K. he eats lying down. But if he stands up to eat, it’s some good stuff. He’s been standing to eat since mid-July. Our compliments to the chef!