Our Dog Food Debacle

Sled dogs are pretty adaptable beings. Especially when it comes to food. Although in the past, Boo has chosen to be a little picky at times, he has been much better the last couple years. Perhaps we’re not babying him as much and he realized he just has to eat the food we give him or he doesn’t get any food lol.

The last few months, we have been feeding the dogs Nutri Source Super Performance dog food. That was mainly because we won two giant bags of it at Doty’s Dusty Dog Dryland Race. The dogs seemed to like it, it seemed good for them, and it lasted a while. But a couple weeks ago, we ran out.

I have been repeatedly checking Chewy.com for the food we typically feed the dogs, which is Country Vet Naturals 30/20 high performance dog food. Again, the dogs seem to love it, it’s healthy for them and made for dog athletes, with no fillers. It’s also very reasonably priced compared to other high performance dog foods.

We can’t find it in store anywhere near us, so we have to rely on when it is in stock on Chewy. Inevitably, when I finally needed it, it was out of stock. I had to run to PetSmart to pick something up to tide the dogs over in the mean time. But HOLY CRAP, have you seen how expensive dog food is lately??? Or maybe it was just the particular store, but $80 for a 30 pound bag of dog food seemed crazy!

I tried looking for active athlete/high performance type dog food, but they didn’t really have anything that specific. I admittedly spent way too much time looking at and thinking about dog foods before settling on a 20 pound bag of Only Natural Pet power food. The dogs didn’t mind it, luckily.

On Thursday, I received a notification from Chewy that our Country Vet Naturals dog food was back in stock! I immediately ordered it, and it said 1-3 day delivery.

Of course, the food from Chewy didn’t arrive the next day. On Friday, we only had enough kibble left for half of each dog’s food. I supplemented the other half with raw chicken, one of their favorites. Saturday came, and they acted like they were absolutely starved, even though they probably ended up with more food the night before than they usually get.

We gave both dogs a very healthy portion of raw chicken for their meal, but they continued pacing around their food bowls acting like they were still starving. They were probably doing so because when they get raw meat, especially chicken, they tend to eat it in one or two big bites and it’s gone immediately. It probably doesn’t seem very filling to them when it’s gone that quickly.

Boo and Pence can be very dramatic (big shocker, we know…) and you would’ve thought the world was ending.

I checked the shipping information from Chewy and it showed the food wasn’t arriving until Monday. I knew we couldn’t wait that long because the dogs weren’t happy with just raw meat. They needed a crunch. On Sunday, I ran to PetSmart again, and of course they were now out of the food I had just gotten a week or two before.

So I spent more time perusing the dog food aisles, looking for a 5 pound bag that wasn’t $30 to get them through the weekend until the other food arrived. I settled on a 5 pound bag of Iams that was on sale. The dogs were sooo excited to see the bag of kibble.

I fed them the recommended amount/their usual amount, and they chowed down then gave me this look like “that’s it?”. So I gave them more. They ate it immediately, but finally seemed satisfied.

Finally on Monday, our shipment from Chewy arrived! Boo was clearly excited.

While I was at PetSmart the second time, I also picked up a couple of pork femurs for them. We haven’t given the bones to the dogs yet because we were about to mow the yard and didn’t want bone chunks scattered around the yard.

I’m anxious to see if their pack dog antics will kick in again once they have them though. Stay tuned for that!

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