Vital EssentialsFreeze Dried Dog Food, Beef Patties 30 oz

I feed our girl ORIJEN food and this is supposedly on the same level as ORIJEN but for some reason anything from essential including this freeze dried food gives her the runs and nasty gas. I wanted to pair this with her dry ORIJEN dry food thus giving her a wet high nutrition food for breakfast. It seemed awesome in theory just add hot water and a nutritious warm start of the day, unfortunately it doesn’t agree with her system. We started out mixing it with the dry ORIJEN but just that small amount sent her to the backyard squatting for all she was worth and it never got better. At the same time we were giving her essential treats since she was getting these from her original fur parents. As we soon realized her system wasn’t liking the food or the treats. I don’t know if there’s an preservative that just doesn’t agree with her or an ingredient but we’ve taken all essential out of her diet which has relieved her stinky gas and loose stool’s completely. It’s a great concept but doesn’t work for our girl vv

I use these as a supplement with regular dry kibble for a picky eater. Usually a small handful of marble sized chunks along with crumbled pieces mixed in or on top.

Yes, I really did just say that a $60 dog food is a great value. How is that possible? I'm glad you asked!To begin with, you have to understand freeze-dried foods. Freeze dried foods are flash frozen and then dried. Freeze drying removes the water, not the flavor. So freeze dried foods retain virtually all their fresh food taste, vitamins and nutritional content while weighing far less than fresh food.Freeze dried foods have 98% of their water removed. This significantly reduces the food's weight, making it easier to handle and less costly to transport. For example, 3lbs of beef weighs only 1 lb after freeze drying, and rapidly rehydrates back to its original weight.A case of regular canned food weighs approximately 24 pounds. The same item of dehydrated foods would weigh from 36 to 45 ounces! This is a 30 ounce bag of pure beef. Once the water is added back into the beef, you will have approximately 90 ounces of beef - or about 5 1/2 lbs of beef!That's a LOT of food.So it is very easy to mistakenly think that this is expensive, when in reality it is a very good deal and far more convenient for you and your pet.BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER IF your pet doesn't like it - right? Not to worry, both of our Pomeranians go nuts for this stuff when we open a bag. Right now we use it as treats. A very little goes a long way.Ideally, it would be best to re-constitute the beef (add water back in) and serve it to them as a meal. For a smaller breed dog, this isn't very expensive at all.For a larger breed dog, feeding is expensive if you are using ANY quality food. If you are feeding a big dog inexpensive food, you aren't feeding him GOOD food. Sorry, but those are just the facts. You can't get large quantities of good food cheap.I personally am very exited about this food for our dogs. We spoil our dogs, but we also try to feed them quality food at the same time. I feel like the Vital Essentials Dog Food is just that, quality food that they love!! When you love your dogs like they are part of the family, this is the kind of food you are excited to serve them!I hope my review is helpful. I try to rate the items that I review on Amazon based on my actual experience with them. I don't generally do a laundry list of features that are already in the description, instead I try to share my personal experience with the product in the hope that you may be using it with a similar "everyperson" point of view and not a professional, "try to make it do everything that it is supposed to do" perspective. I feel like most of us are buying products for the same basic reasons and I don't always need a review that tells me every detail of the product. I'm not a "professional reviewer," I'm just a guy who likes to share his experience with products - ESPECIALLY when I like them, but also in an effort to warn fellow amazon customers when something isn't as described or as good as advertised. Thanks for reading my review!

In order to do this review I had to enlist the help of my girl Sandy. At about 14 years old she's getting up there in age. Her legs are a bit shaky and she's become a lot more mellow lately. She's also losing weight and that is at least in part because she all but refuses to eat the regular dog food she's enjoyed for many, many years. Even pouring gravy or some wet canned dog food over her kibble doesn't seem to stimulate her desire to eat much if any of it.When this popped up on Amazon, it seemed like it would be a good thing to try. I don't think she's ever been given anything like this before. As soon as the bag was opened and the scent wafted out of the bag, Sandy's ears perked up and she sauntered over. She looked more excited and more anxious than she had in quite a while. Her eyes followed my hand as it went into the bag, she licked her lips a few times and a little drool dripped down on the floor.These are pretty big freeze dried patties, probably about the size of a half pound hamburger. They are freeze dried so they are really light and presumably they smell good to dogs. To humans the smell isn't so great but, well, it is dog food. It does have a stronger scent than the dried stuff she normally eats.With a bowl of her kibble and some gravy on it just a few feet away, she turned all her attention to me as I pulled one of these burger like things out of the bag. Since it would be her first one, I didn't want to give her the whole thing and wanted to see how she would react to it. I slowly broke off bite size chunks that she eagerly took from my hands and gobbled down without chewing very much. Though it's a little bit of a stretch for her to bend all the way down to the floor to lick it, she did that after every bite and after we were all finished with each round. Over the course of about 3 hours I gave her about 1/3 of the patty in bite size chunks and she gobbled them all down every single time. By just the second time I grabbed the bag she sauntered over in anticipation of the next bites of these patties. If I poured the contents of the bag on the floor I suspect she would have eaten the whole bag.Of course when giving a dog a new type of food, there is always a chance it may come out the other end in a Hersey's syrup like mess on the carpet, especially when the dog is older and may not be able to control her bowels as well as she used to. Fortunately her subsequent bowel movements were normal and outside. It didn't give her any stinky farts either.In the end these are senior dog approved and people approved because they can get a very picky senior dog to eat. That and they don't result in any unwanted bowel movements even from an elderly dog who has never eaten these before. Sandy give these 4 paws up and the strongest tail wag she can give which translates into 5 stars. Sandy didn't mind the price tag but these are pretty pricey. If you've got a dog who is getting old and might be around a bit longer if (s)he would just eat a bit more to maintain more strength, this looks to be an excellent though rather expensive food to get. In order to make these a staple in your dogs diet, chances are you'll need to dig a bit deeper into the bank account for them.