Pupford Dehydrated Dog Food Review

Pupford’s goal as a company is to create “a happier and healthier relationship” between you and your pups. This goal extends beyond simply selling dog food. Pupford offers a holistic set of products and services to improve your dog’s health, training, and companionship.

Apart from their excellent dog food (we’ll look more into this shortly), Pupford partnered with Zak George, a popular Youtube dog trainer, to provide completely free training courses. Zak utilizes a variety of Pupford’s products during the training tutorials including small freeze-dried treats, 30ft leash, and tug toys.  

As part of this free puppy training course, you gain access to the private Facebook group for Zak’s training where you can connect with other customers training their pups.

Now let’s get back to the piece you’re really wondering about – is Pupford’s food a good choice for your dog?

Pupford’s Quality

As for the food itself, Pupford uses high quality dehydrated ingredients that aim to improve your dog’s skin and coat, aid in easier digestions, and improve energy levels. These are achieved in large part due to the minimally processed real food that’s used; but the second (important) aspect is the dehydration.

Traditional kibble loses a lot of the nutrients during the cooking process. With dehydrated foods, the nutrients are much more palpable, which in turn reduces the amount needed during feedings.

At the time of writing this, Pupford only offers two recipes: chicken or beef. Sasha tends to not do so well long-term with red meats, so this limits her to just chicken. Personally, I hope they come out with a few more recipes soon such as pork for those than are prone to red meat or poultry allergies.

Ingredients

Chicken dehydrated, chicken, coconut meal, banana meal, sweet potatoes, salmon powder, chicken liver, lentils, potato starch, natural flavor, pumpkin, natural potato flavor, carrots, tricalcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, flaxseeds, blueberries, apples, cranberries, parsley, orange peel powder, sunflower lecithin, papaya, spray dried egg product, fish oil (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid), vegetable oil (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid), yeast extract, fructooligosaccharides (FOS), carob, betaine hydrochloride, taurine, L-lysine, DL-methionine, New Zealand green mussel, potassium chloride, choline chloride, calcium hydroxide, L-carnitine, fumaric acid, lactic acid, citric acid, malic acid, thyme extract, Yucca Schidigera extract, salt, DL-alpha-tocopheryl acetate, zinc sulfate, ferrous sulfate, niacin, copper sulfate, thiamine mononitrate, d-calcium pantothenate, vitamin A acetate, biotin, manganese sulfate, riboflavin, pyridoxine hydrochloride, vitamin B12 supplement, cholecalciferol, potassium iodide, sodium selenite, folic acid, vanillin, citrus peels extract, turmeric extract, cloves extract, rosemary extract.

Guaranteed Analysis

Crude Protein (min): 30 %
Crude Fat (min): 18%
Crude Fiber (max): 7%
Moisture (max): 10%

Cost of Pupford Dog Food

The biggest drawback for customers when looking into dehydrated foods is the sticker-shock price. In the case of Pupford, a 9lb bag is currently ~$70. That sounds crazy, until you realize the 9lbs of dehydrated food in this bag actually make over 34lbs of dog food. That’s cheaper than the Fromm dog food (kibble) I often feed Sasha.

Feeding Guidelines

The chart below (which is also found on the back of every bag) is very straight forward and easy to understand. According to this, I will mix 2 1/2 cups of food with ~2 1/2 cups of warm water for my 55lb cattle dog/border collie/german shepherd/everything else mix.

Taste Test, Courtesy of Sasha

So that’s what I did, but it ended up being a bit too soupy even after waiting the 3-4 minutes for it to re-hydrate. The side by side photos below show the food before and after mixing it with water. It’s not the most pleasant looking food (a meaty oatmeal?), and maybe that’s why their website doesn’t show many real shots of the food, but this is the least of my worries. What I care about is the ingredients, and they are great.

She went to town on this stuff. Throughout all of our kibble and fresh dog food tests, I think she set the record for length of time licking an empty bowl. I think it had to do with the wet texture. Overall we are very satisfied with Pupford’s products and plan to continue feeding it to Sasha as a topper to her current kibble.

Pupford Training Treats

We also tested out the freeze-dried beef liver training treats. The ingredients are simply 95% freeze-dried pure beef liver and 5% pea protein. The limited low-cal ingredients are optimal for training dogs without worrying about adding too many non-essential nutrients to their diet. And better yet, each bag has like 450 treats in it!

Sasha, do a trick!