dehydrated verse dry food

Question
QUESTION: Hi There,I take feeding my dogs very seriously and trawl the internet on the subject all of the time.I want the very best for my  dogs,however i have been reading about dry dog foods and i mean premium ones not nasty ones and from what i have been reading they are not good for dogs.And i dont like how they can turn rancid as soon as you open them.What i want to know is i have found a Holistic dehydrated food full of herbs veg and meat it says on a dry weight basis there is 21% protein in it but meat is not the first ingredient veg is.The other food is an award winning premium dry food.It's first ingredient is fresh chicken (19%)then 19% chicken meal and fat + other nice stuff like prebiotics and cranberry.There is 26% protein in a 250kg bag i think!.I have read that wet food is even better than dry please help me to make the best decision i also feed some cooked foods to my dogs as i like them to have some real food.Thank's L munro.

ANSWER: Hi Lee-Anne,

Very often a dehydrated food can be an excellent choice. However, not all premium dry foods are terrible and not all dehyrdated products are great. The information you have given me is a good start but not enough to offer a verdict here. What I'd like to do is see the full ingredient list and have a poke around the website. It would also help me to know about your dogs; age, weight, breed and health status. Sometimes what works for one dog isn't the greatest for another. If you do decide to go with a dehydrated food, I'd like to help you locate the best one for your pack.

Fill me in a bit and we can go from there.

All the best, Catherine

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Catherine,Here are the two websites for you to check out www.landofholisticpets.co.uk when you get on to this site you are then looking for Robbies holistic cuisine this is the dehydrated food.The other site is www.ardengrange.com when you enter this site the food im interested in is the premium rich in chicken this is in the dry food category.I am looking forward to your opinion on these two foods.I want the best food with the best nutrition in it,i recently went onto the site see spot live longer i thought this was a great site but it made me afraid of feeding my dogs dry food.My dogs are 10 and 13 years old i dont feed them senior diets because i have read that this is the worst thing you could feed your dog.Both my dogs can suffer form colitis but i manage to keep this under control.One dog is a small german spitz the other a yorkie.Thank's L Munro.

Answer
Hi again - I just took a look at the foods and I quite prefer the first one(Robbie's). I do find it a wee bit lower in protein and fat than I like to see, and I could have used a more comprehensive nutrient analysis; that said, the food looks quite nice. And with colitis, you may want even LOWER fat - you need to try and see.  I'm not crazy about the Arden Grange food; you might add a can of the Chicken formula mixed with some brown rice for a special treat(my own dogs get a can of Merrick's or Evanger's maybe once a week at most, and they love it) but the canned is designed to be added to the dry food and the dry has corn, brewer's yeast, other ingredients I don't like to see.

Of course, there are aspects of dry food that are undesirable. Even the best ones. That said, I'm probably sounding like a broken record now, but I'm seeing some terrible problems arising from incorrectly formulated home made diets. A food like Robbie's is a nice compromise. I'd say go for it, but as always, monitor your dog. That means stool, appetite, weight levels, coat and so on. If he doesn't do well, it's not a good food for him!

Thanks for the link too - I am often asked about foods for dogs in the UK and this is a good one to add to the list. I may well contact them and ask for more information. The lack of a Guaranteed Analysis on the site is not great.
Let me know how you do!
Catherine