When my German shepherd Clancy was young, we kept a box of Kirkland wet dog food in the pantry for special occasions. Like most dogs, Clancy ate kibble most of the time. Kibble is important for dogs because it helps keep your dog’s teeth clean and strong. But there are times when soft, wet dog food can be great for dogs. You can feed wet food as a supplement to your dog’s dry-food diet, giving her a can or two every day or so. Or, if you have an older dog with rotten and broken teeth — as Clancy’s unfortunately were (broken, not rotten) after years of chewing tennis balls — soft food can completely replace a dry food diet. This will allow your dog to live comfortably for the rest of her life. And in my entire experience with dogs, I’ve found that they adore wet food. This is good and bad: good because it means your dog will eat, and bad because it means it’s easy for your dog to overeat if you don’t watch the amount you give.
Some wet food is pricey, while other wet food is more inexpensive. Some comes in a can and some comes in little plastic containers. In this article, we’ll take a look at the best wet dog foods on the market today.
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Blue Buffalo Lamb Dinner with Garden Vegetables
This delicious-to-Eira wet dog food comes in a can like the ones we used to get Clancy when I was a kid. And just like those canned dog foods, it looks singularly unappealing when you open the can.
Lamb dinner, anyone?
Also like the canned dog foods of my childhood, I tried to get this one out by shaking the can and then by tapping it on the food bowl. Neither method worked. I had to grab a knife from my silverware drawer and dig the dog food out. And yes, that’s exactly what I used to have to do with Clancy’s wet dog food. Oh, the memories!
Doesn’t that look appetizing? Maybe not to you, but your dog will love this stuff. The smell isn’t great, but it isn’t terrible either.
The reason I chose this dog food to test out is the ingredients list. Unlike other canned dog foods on the market, it’s made from all-around real meat and vegetables. The first six ingredients are lamb, lamb broth, lamb liver, carrots, peas, and brown rice. Even more fantastic, additional wholesome vegetables, seeds, and berries follow those.
Just as advertised, this wet dog food really is a lamb dinner with garden vegetables. And it’s one your dogs will slurp up immediately.
You might now be asking: did Eira love this food?
What will Eira think of this delicious meal?
See for yourself in the video below.
Yep, she loved it. And even better, the food didn’t negatively affect her in any way. When changing a dog’s food, I usually try to ease into it so that the dog doesn’t overreact to the new ingredients and get sick. But with canned dog food, I didn’t want to store it in my fridge. For all its amazing ingredients, the stuff still smells like dog food. I’m a vegetarian, too, so the thought of mushy lamb in my fridge freaks me out! (But you can totally store extras if you’re up for it.) And besides, one can is almost — but not quite — enough food for Eira’s dinner, so I did leave a little bit of kibble out for her after that.
Blue Buffalo makes several additional wet dog foods — including a fish-based one, a turkey one, and of course, beef and chicken options — all of which can be found at the link below. They’re all fantastic, healthy choices filled with good ingredients that your dog will lap right up.
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Taste of the Wild Grain Free High Prairie Wet Dog Food
An excellent brand, Taste of the Wild was our food of choice when Bella was five, six, and seven. It’s more expensive than other brands, but the high quality ingredients make the price worth it. Bella was a notoriously picky eater and was often just a touch too skinny because of it, but with Taste of the Wild she stayed healthy. I only wish we had started giving it to her sooner.
Bella loved the Taste of the Wild kibble, but their wet food is excellent too. Like the Blue Buffalo wet food, Taste of the Wild sells theirs in cans. Unlike the Blue Buffalo, though, the Taste of the Wild wet food is more like stew and less like beefy mush — both of which would be appealing to dogs, of course. The first six ingredients of their High Prairie canned dog food are beef, lamb broth, beef broth, vegetable broth, lamb liver, and dried egg whites. Talk about protein! If your dog is high-energy and needs a lot of meaty sustenance, this is an excellent choice.
At the link below, you’ll find not only the High Prairie dog food but also their salmon, lamb, wild boar, and roasted duck wet foods.
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Nature’s Recipe Easy to Digest Grain-Free Chicken in Broth
If you really, really love your dog, you have to get them this wet food by Nature’s Recipe, even if you only buy them one plastic tub of it as a birthday treat. The stuff is amazing!
Eira loves Nature’s Recipe!
The first six ingredients here? Chicken, chicken broth, sweet potato, pumpkin, canola oil, and tomato paste. What a cozy fall treat! Eira thought so, too. Like most wet dog food, this one isn’t appealing to the human eye — but it does resemble chicken soup, which is nice.
And Eira couldn’t get enough of it.
The perfect soup for a dog after a jaunt in the rainy fall day.
The tub is quite small — only 2.75 ounces — and it’s a little pricier than other wet foods. But it’s so worth it. As with the Blue Buffalo canned dog food that she tried, Eira suffered no ill effects from the surprise treat. I would’ve been alarmed if she had, since Nature’s Recipe brands this wet food as easy to digest.
This is a perfect treat for large dogs, a great all-the-time food for old, small-breed dogs, or even toothless old large-breed dogs. At the link below, you can find additional flavors from the same brand: chicken and venison, chicken and duck, ocean fish and tuna, all in grain-free options as well as regular ones.
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Castor & Pollux Organix Chicken and Potato Wet Dog Food
The best organic choice on the market, this tasty canned dog food is sourced and cooked right here in the US and is USDA certified organic. The first six ingredients are organic chicken, water, organic brown rice, organic potatoes, organic carrots, and organic coconut flour. Farther down in the list are organic blueberries and organic apples and other nutritious things.
If you keep an organic diet for health and environment reasons and want the same for your precious pooch, Castor & Pollux Organix is the way to go. This is an excellent choice for dogs who have food sensitivities that affect their skin and fur, such as unresolved hot spots or other trouble areas.
Castor & Pollux also makes an organic chicken and brown rice wet dog food, an organic turkey and vegetable choice, and an organic turkey, carrot, and potato wet food. You can find all of them below.
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Cesar’s Wet Dog Food
Even though she’s far from small, Eira had to get in on the Cesar action, which is widely regarded as an excellent small-breed wet dog food. The trays are definitely tiny, but Eira still eyed her tray with huge interest.
Eira loves wet dog food! Even wet dog food that’s meant for dogs an eighth her size…
The Cesar dog food is more of a loaf with a rich broth, and if you’re smart and want to give it to your big dog without having to feed her 5 tubs just to take the edge off her hunger, you can break into bits and mix it into her kibble. I always love doing this because it means my dog will actually eat some kibble, too, and I’ll save money and she’ll save her teeth.
This time, though, Eira was so excited for this rich beefy brew…
It ALMOST looks kind of good to me.
I ended up just giving her the tub as is. And she scarfed that loaf down in a minute. The first six ingredients of this good stuff are beef, chicken broth, water, chicken liver, pork by-products, and beef lung. Ew to me, yum to Eira. The only questionable thing here is the pork by-products. But there is real bacon just a few ingredients later, so that’s a plus. But if you like to stay away from by-products, you may want to find a different food for your small dog. (Nature’s Recipe is also ideal for the littler canines!)
At the link below, you can purchase not only the beef, bacon, and cheese flavor but also the filet mignon, New York strip, porterhouse with vegetables, and prime rib. What a steak-feast for your dog!
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Whichever food your dog prefers, be sure to check the full ingredients list to make sure everything in there is safe and tasty for your dog. The above choices offer something for every dog!
Happy feeding!
Laura Ojeda Melchor grew up with two beloved German shepherd dogs—Clancy and her daughter, Bella. From the time her family brought Clancy home, Laura took on the duty of pooper-scooper and potty trainer. As a teenager Laura helped her mother care for Clancy during her pregnancy. She still remembers fondly the exciting, frigid winter night when the seven special puppies were born. Laura kept the youngest puppy—Bella—and potty trained her, too. She taught Bella important commands, took her for long walks, and spent hours throwing tennis balls for her.
In November, Laura brought home a sweet new puppy, Eira Violet. Eira is half Alaskan malamute and half German shepherd, and Laura loves her deeply. She chose not to use a crate to potty train Eira and was pleasantly surprised at the results. She now has a sweet, energetic dog who always uses the potty outside, plays well with Laura’s toddler, and enjoys long family walks in beautiful Alaska. If you were to meet Eira, she’d bound up to you with a wagging tail and get you running around the yard with her in no time.