Stella & Chewy's Freeze-Dried Raw Duck Duck Goose Dinner Patties Grain-Free Dog Food, 15 oz. bag

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

These patties are amazing!!! Our 2 pups, and 6 foster dogs have all been obsessed!!! I'm talking, do any trick we want them to, obsessed. Will actually sit and stay, obsessed! Aside from Stella and chewy having good ingredients, a well known brand and a variety of products, they had very little smell (perhaps due to being freeze dried?), we felt good known our dogs were having something tasty and nutritious, and they work great for treat time and training time. They are costly... I won't lie, the price is the biggest downside. And because the dogs love them, they tend not to last long around here. And we do have to hide them because they will seriously sniff the bag out and try to rip it open! But if you're looking for a good treat that your dogs will go crazy for, even if they're picky, this is it!!!

♦Meet Wrigley: the 4-year-old 7lb Maltese who has us wrapped around his fluffy paws. Wrigley has no known allergies. ♦Summary Wrigley 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 Back At 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’s Wrigley 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 Now For 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 have a very senior dog who really doesn't have teeth anymore. And sometimes I'm having trouble getting her to eat different things. She won't eat canned dog food. So I tried these along with one other type of the same brand. And I broke them all up real small added a little tiny bit of water to moisten them, and mix with the science diet that I soften in water and she devours them. It's really eases my mind because she's very tiny only 6 lb so if I don't get her to eat she could go downhill real quick, since she's almost 16 years old.

My dogs love these

I have a 1 year old Maltese that has been a problem eater from the start. I would not want to know how much I have spent in various foods, all of them considered premium foods only to have her walk away. I honestly expected the same this time but was shocked to see her beg for this food! She thinks it is a treat and will sit at the closet door for more. I even cooked for her because she would not eat dog foods of any kind and even then she would not always eat. Going on a trip with her was always very difficult because what she would eat one day she would refuse the next day so hard to know what to pack. I have waited a couple days to see how she responded before writing this review and so far she can't get enough but I do limit her to 2 a day or one if she happened to eat her home cooked food in the Morning. I also have a 4 lb Morkie I rescued that loves them as well but she also loves the meals I prepare for her so I just break her a little piece for a treat when I feed the picky one. This will be wonderful on vacations for feeding and so easy to take along since it is freeze dried. So far I have just broken it up and handed it to her, I haven't even tried it after adding water yet since she loves it so much the way it is. Even many biscuits and treats I have bought them I had issues with diarrhea so I bake their treats as well trying different recipes until I find a favorite. I think I finally have a good feeding plan with this and what I make at home and relieved after research that it is considered a 5 star food in nutrition. Needless to say I am overjoyed!! It is a bit pricey but at least I am not throwing it away so to me it is worth it. I have already ordered more !!