You all know we feed our dogs (and kitty) a Species Appropriate Raw Food diet. However, we know that some folks would rather not handle raw meat; and raw meat while traveling can be a pain (as well as messy). There are other options available.

Enter freeze dried diets. A new acquaintance introduced us to Northwest Naturals pet food (she even sent us some samples!) As per our usual, we did some digging to see what it’s all about. We are highly impressed with what we read and hear about it! So much so we wanted to tell you about it specifically and decided to add Northwest Naturals diets to our Dog Care Standards list of acceptable foods.

What do they offer? Raw Frozen food in nuggets, bars, and chubs (beef, bison, chicken, lamb, chicken & salmon, turkey); Freeze Dried diets in nuggets (lamb, beef, chicken); raw meaty bones, chicken and turkey necks; and freeze dried 100% liver Treats (beef, chicken, lamb). All USA ingredients, hormone and medication free meats from the NW (or New Zealand/Australia for the lamb); and made in Portland, Oregon in a facility for human-grade meats so no dead, diseased, or dying can even enter the building. Now that’s truly something!

The dogs love ‘em! We really like the liver Treats for training (well, the dogs that is)!

The Freeze Dried diet got us to thinking about all the times it would be helpful to us – while traveling, a highly dog-desirable treat for training puppies/dogs that won’t throw diet balance off-kilter, extra yummy nutrition for finicky moms (yes, they go through a picky pregnancy phase!), a raw snack for sending with pups who fly to their new owners, and to keep on hand for emergency preparedness (natural disasters, evacuation due to wildfire, etc.)

We discovered another great reason for the Freeze Dried nuggets, unfortunately. A couple weeks ago my kitty Chanel broke off an upper canine tooth somehow (helped in part by a particular cat-persistent dog), including part of the root!!! She was in lots of pain needless to say (I used essential oils to help her) and obviously not able to eat very well. The softest meat we had on hand is chicken, but it tends to give her a pancreatic attack so we limit it (she has chronic pancreatitis). The Northwest Naturals Freeze Dried Lamb diet nuggets are fairly soft. I crumbled some for her to eat as she felt able. Well, she dove in immediately and loved it, (which says a lot in itself!) and we didn’t need to worry about a pancreatitis flare-up adding to the trauma! Chanel is doing very well and back to eating raw meat.

A huge “Thank You” to Carol for the introduction to Northwest Naturals and the timely samples!