Food Friday: Renew Gold Balance Dog Food

Zip and I won this bag of Renew Gold Balance dog food at the Crusty Classic disc competition. This is the first thing I've ever won at any kind of dog competition, so I think it's pretty cool. I was also excited to get a bag of food from a brand I'd never heard of before. I have done a ridiculous amount of research on dog foods and various brands, and somehow I had never run across Renew.

The Company

Renew is a company based in Northern California, so they are semi-local to me. They apparently started out as a horse supplement company, as the website states that they introduced stabilized rice bran to the equine industry. That's rice bran that has been treated so it won't go rancid, I know several people that feed it to their horses. 

The company currently makes horse supplements, horse treats, chicken food, and dog food. Admittedly, this sets off some alarm bells for me. It might be all the grain-free propaganda I've soaked up over the years, but the idea of having a grain company making dog food feels a little weird. I mean, isn't most of it going to end up being grain?

My other small qualm with this company is that they heavily promote their food as being GMO-free. I like genetically modified foods because I understand how science works. While I understand that the primary point of making and advertising food as being GMO-free, I feel that it promotes anti-science thinking. My dogs are GMOs, there's no reason I can't feed them foods that have been modified to be resistant to pests and diseases.

The Food

This dog food is advertised as not smelling like dog food, and they're absolutely right. It smells like coconut oil. I'm not sure how I feel about this, as my gut reaction is that dog food should be meat-based and therefore smell meaty. The first two ingredients are meat meals, pork and chicken. The next three ingredients are grains though, rice, barley, and oats. The sixth ingredient is coconut oil, which means this stuff has a lot of coconut oil in it. That explains the smell. 

The Verdict

As dog foods go, this one isn't bad. It's a nice mid-range food that would likely get 4 stars on the Dog Food Advisor website had it been reviewed there. It doesn't contain any wheat, corn, or soy products, and while the protein content is padded a little with pea protein, that ingredient is pretty far down the list. Obviously it's a good enough food that I'm reviewing it here, and I'm also feeding it to my dogs right now because a free 30-lb bag of decent dog food is nothing to sneeze at.

I'm not sure the dogs appreciate the coconutty-ness of Renew Gold Balance. Ru and Zip will only eat it if I add some canned food or other topper. Zip and Godzilla have lost a bit of weight since we started this food, mostly because working dogs need a very high-fat diet and this is more of an average-fat food. We'll be finishing the bag, but I don't think I'll be buying any more of this.

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.

Treat Tuesday: EttaSays Little Bitz Toasted Coconut

This bag of EttaSays Little Bitz arrived in our most recent allergy-friendly BarkBox. We get all sorts of new and interesting treats with no beef, chicken, turkey, corn, soy, or wheat in our box. EttaSays makes two flavors of Little Bitz, ours are Toasted Coconut. These are semi-moist and itty bitty.

Good For: High value training treats that are just the right size. Smelling strong enough to get the attention of the dogs without making my hands all gross.

Not Good For: Lasting a long time.

How Much We Like Them: These may become our new go-to training treats when I don't feel like chopping up bits of hot dog or smelling like dried liver all day.