Food Friday: Party Animal Cocolicious Wholesome Pork Canned Dog Food

Cocolicious is Party Animal's highest quality, most limited-ingredient product line. It contains wonderful, magical, fabulous, all-powerful coconut oil. It's also 95% meat and comes in 14 different recipes. I really appreciate that they have combination recipes like 'lamb and fish' and 'pork and salmon'. Most companies just do 'chicken and (insert protein here)' for everything. Brisbane can have 8 of the Cocolicious foods, which is pretty amazing. These are grain-free, egg-free, limited ingredient foods. They aren't kidding about the coconut oil either, it's the third or fourth thing on the list of ingredients.

The Company

As I've mentioned before, Party Animal sources all their ingredients from the US except the lamb and venison they get from New Zealand. While they offer a unique product, they do use Evanger's as a co packer. Evanger's was cited by the FDA for being absolutely disgusting back in 2011, and the complaint was only closed in 2013. Hopefully things are better now. Party Animal itself has never had a recall.

The Food

Following his recent surgery, Cocolicious was one of the few foods that Brisbane would reliably eat. Briz is allergic to chicken, turkey, duck, eggs, corn, barley, and sweet potatoes, so finding canned food he could even have was a challenge. To make things even more interesting, he became incredibly picky and wouldn't eat the same food two meals in a row, so I couldn't buy an entire case of anything. I would walk into a store, read every single label, and walk out with maybe three cans.

Fortunately, Brisbane ate Cocolicious every time it was offered. He particularly likes the venison kind, but will happily eat any of them. I even sent a couple of cans with him to his first chemo session, when he stayed with the vet for a few days.

The Verdict

Party Animal's Cocolicious canned dog food rates five out of five stars on the Dog Food Advisor website. This product line offers some novel protein sources, and a lot of variety for dogs with allergies. There's a lot of organic hype around the food, but I think I'm becoming dead to that so it's cool. I'm not sold on the miraculous benefits of coconut oil yet, but as long as nobody goes off the deep end and tries to make a food out of nothing but coconuts, we're probably ok.

Food Friday: Alternative Protein Roundup, Venison Edition

Brisbane's Bark Blog is approaching its second birthday, and we're taking a look back at some of the unique and interesting goodies we've found for dogs with food allergies. Brisbane himself is allergic to poultry and eggs, and was recently diagnosed with corn, barley, and sweet potato allergies as well. Finding foods, treats, and chews for him is an ongoing project, and I'm always looking for new things to try.

Venison is a popular protein found in quite a few limited ingredient diets intended for dogs with food allergies. I assume it's also somewhat easy to get in places where people hunt. Here on the coast of southern California, nobody hunts. Well maybe a few people do, but nobody talks about it. Saying you go out and kill animals for sport sort of feels antisocial, unless those animals are fish. Guns aren't common either, and the people who do have them tend to keep them in lockers at shooting ranges. I have seen a number of raw feeders recommend asking friends that hunt for their freezerburned deer meat, which seems downright foreign when I know so many people that have never even tasted venison.

Photo by Erin Koski

Anyway, venison is a nice flavorful game meat that my dogs absolutely love. Like rabbit, it is a common alternative protein that does not seem to be a common allergen yet.

Venison Food

Stella & Chewy's makes both freeze-dried and frozen Simply Venison raw dog food. Primal also offer a frozen raw singe-protein venison food in their Primal Nuggets product line.  

In the non-raw food department, Natural Balance Limited Ingredient Diet Sweet Potato and Venison food was a common sight around my house until I figured out that Brisbane was allergic to sweet potatoes. We also tried the canned version back when the place I worked still carried it. Wysong gave me a coupon for free shipping, so I bought a bag of Epigen Venison, but Ru didn't like it. I'm not sure I would buy it again because it contained powdered barley grass and Briz has a barley allergy. Likewise, we'll be skipping the Party Animal Heavenly Venison canned food from now on because it contains sweet potatoes. 

So far, I think our favorite venison-based single-protein dog food has been the Canine Caviar Wilderness dog food. The canned version also went over well here. It's awfully high in calories for Brisbane, though. At the moment, we're working our way through the big bag of Pure Vita Venison and Red Lentils that the company handed out when my employers started carrying their products. Free dog food is my favorite kind of dog food. Ziwi Peak makes an air-dried venison, but it costs way more than their beef dog food so I've not been able to bring myself to buy it yet. I bet it smells horrible yet wonderful.

Venison Treats

So far I think our absolute favorite treat has been the Superior Farms Venison Crepe. It was basically a soft, delicious rawhide chew, but made out of a deer instead. We've had numerous Etta Says Deer Chews show up in our monthly subscription boxes, and they never last long. Less exciting are Natural Balance's LID Sweet Potato and Venison cookies. One of our favorite training treats so far has been the Merrick Venison Holiday Stew sausages.

What other deer-based, elk-based, or moose-based products are out there that we haven't tried yet?

Food Friday: Party Animal Heavenly Venison Canned Dog Food

Party Animal's pate-style dog food comes in a variety of flavors. With a couple of exceptions, they are grain-free and use a single type of protein. A few of the varieties contain eggs, but only the poultry-based foods. Brisbane is allergic to chicken, turkey, duck, and eggs, and half the flavors of Party Animal are Briz-safe.

This is one of the foods we carry at work, and it's pretty popular. I like the amount of variety they offer for Brisbane, he can have their beef, venison, lamb, and salmon cans. They don't throw eggs or chicken broth in there, unlike a lot of companies.

One of the things I really like about Party Animal is that they don't try to beat consumers over the head with an appeal to nature. Their product packaging and website are uncluttered and aesthetically pleasing, not jammed full of messages about how "natural" their food is. Their website does not scream about how my chihuahua is actually a tiny, misshapen wolf. This pleases my logical thinking brain quite a lot.

They do, however, state that their food is organic ad infinitum. I'm totally over organic food for a variety of reasons, from the lack of clear benefits to the crazy prices. I'm also a big fan of GMOs and think we need more of them because I like science. A lot. Still, I think Party Animal does a nice job of explaining what exactly the various terms on their labels mean and how those terms are regulated. It's very open and honest and reminds me a lot of Dog Food Logic.

Party Animal sources all of their ingredients from the USA, except for the lamb and venison that they get from New Zealand. I know we're all pretty leery about anything edible coming out of China these days so that's a huge relief. The company has never had a recall, but their products are co-packed by Evangers. That's a deal-breaker for some, as Evangers has had issues ranging from theft of utilities at their plant, to inaccurate labeling of their products.

Party Animal canned foods are rated 4.5 out of 5 stars on Dog Food advisor. I think they're great for dogs with allergies, and the let me get some much-needed variety into Brisbane's diet. Unfortunately, Ru doesn't like any of the flavors we've tried.