Spot Farms Whole Grain Chicken Dog Food, Natural Human Grade Dehydrated Dog Food, 3.5Lb (Makes 14Lbs)

TLDR Pros: high-quality, dog loves it more than any other food, easy to mixTLDR Cons: the purchasing process!!, may be giving dog gas, more expensive than initially seemsPros:So the product itself seems to be one of the best foods I can find. I really wanted human-grade food that didn't have any animal meal in it, and this delivered. I first tried the Whole Grain Turkey Product, which seemed to give my dog diarrhea. I should emphasize though that my dog has never seemed to react well to turkey so that may just be her personally. I also only had her on the turkey for a few weeks. I switched over to chicken because it was cheaper at the time and it seems to be much easier on her stomach. She does still fart a lot, I'm not sure if that's the food or something else.As far as how SHE likes it, it's clearly her favorite food out of anything I've ever given her. She's not particularly food-oriented but she gobbles this up every time. I've never seen her react to food the way she reacts to this food.Now for the cons:1. Although I'm sure the food multiplies 4x the way they advertise by weight, but this isn't so for volume. You put in 1 part dry food in for every 1.5 parts water, leading to 2.5x the volume you're initially given, not 4x. This means I don't get as much food out of this has I had thought. She goes through an 8 lb box in 2 weeks using their instructions on how much to feed her. And honestly, I'm going to start feeding her more because this isn't enough -- she's starting to become underweight. I initially bought it because it was so cheap but now I think I could maybe get something cheaper.2. These people clearly are either too small of a business or too disorganized to get it together and it drives me NUTS!! I have a 45 lb high-energy dog, so she goes through a LOT of food, and I have to be constantly buying food for her since the max I can get her is an 8 lb box. Why don't I buy it in bulk you ask? Because not only is the food near the expiration date half the time (even though it lasts 18 months past manufacture, it's just always really old food) but also for some reason buying their items in bulk costs MORE than buying the 8 lb boxes alone. In addition, the item is constantly going out of stock and I've seen the price fluctuate DRASTICALLY from $35 for an 8 lb box to $55 for an 8 lb box. It's like watching the stock market, and it's stressful to constantly be watching Amazon to see when my product is IN STOCK and REASONABLY PRICED.Overall, I love the product but I'm thinking about switching to another food because it's so expensive and they make the buying process so stressful.

I use all the dehydrated dog foods so I was excited to get one with protein at this price point. Overall the food is well made and I have bought multiple boxes since the price is good.Biggest complaint is this stuff is not appealing in sight or smell and very hard to mix up. Once it sits for a few minutes it's like wall plaster in consistency and even adding more water is hard to mix in.I've started doing a 60/40 ratio with Grandma Lucy's Artisan Pre-Mix which helps make mixing this easier.I have show dogs and feed this for their morning meal only. I mix in supplements, so need this to not "harden" before I can do that. I also had one picky dog that does not like the consistency of playdoh.My rating of this in comparison to the other common dehydrated foods:1. Grandma Lucy's is my first choice for ingredients and easy of use. I use the pre-mix and add my own proteins. Cost for 8lb bag averages about $52. Artisan mix smells like mashed potatoes.2. Spot Farms chicken or turkey - cost about $50 but hard to mix and not as popular with my dogs.3. Honest Kitchen - base mix and chicken or beef - (average about $60-75) - dogs will eat if I mix in other protein, but there is a lot of green smell (maybe alfalfa) that two of my dogs don't respond to well.5. Sojos - dogs hated this and it takes a lot longer to rehydrate. Also very expensive. Buy it locally the first time so you can return it if your dogs hate it.Advice to users: add a lot of water and mix and scrape the sides. Don't mix to a normal consistency as this tends to expand and "harden" as it sits. It should look soupy before letting it sit.Advice to manufacturer: please work on consistency and make this less like a bowl of playdoh or plaster.

Good food and an acceptable alternative to the more expensive Sojos and Honest Kitchen offerings. Very fine powder like consistency more akin to the Honest Kitchen brand than Sojos. A bit gelatinous though.My only complaint is if you have a large dog, (mine is 85lbs) an 8lb box only lasts 12 days. Try and work that out to take advantage of the subscription options to get a discount. Bet you can't! They only offer subscriptions for the 3.5lb box. It's true you could order 6 of the smaller boxes and gain the 15% subscription discount, but I still found it cheaper to subscribe at Chewy-dot-com by ordering 3 8lb boxes. I also don't like the waste of ordering 6 smaller boxes. The packaging waste is absurd and stands to reason that it *Should* be cheaper to purchase in larger quantities in general *Because* there is less waste.None of the freeze-dried dog food companies have addressed this properly. You can buy a 40lb bag of kibble easily, but this type of food is only ever sold in 10lb or less packaging. This makes for a lot of waste and a lot of hassle to set up any type of automated food delivery without having too much or too little food. There just needs to be a larger buying option that you could pair with a smaller size to fine tune your needs for a monthly supply. A larger option should also reflect a bit of a discount because of the packaging cost savings.