Original Kibble

After trying several brands of dog food such as the ones that are Grain free beef and the ones with the mix of Beef and Rice, Lamb and Rice, Chicken and Rice, I was finally able to find a substitute food that my dog would not end up drooling profusely and with a big scary seizure. For a long time, the only dog food my dog was able to tolerate relatively well without suffering from seizures was” Blue Buffalo Grain Free Freedom Beef Recipe” but this brand kept on going out of stock. The Blue Buffalo ingredients’ list looks great on the bag but I do not think it is that great because my dog turds were always black like tar and hard. Besides I was never able to feed him more than 1/3 of a scoop three times a day and yet his belly was always distended like a drum and he kept on gaining weight. Because “Blue Buffalo Grain Free Freedom Beef Recipe” kept on going out of stock, I tried switching him to a more common brand easier to find such as Blue Buffalo Chicken, Blue Buffalo Lamb, Blue Buffalo Chicken and Rice, Hill Science Lamb and Rice, Nutro Lamb and Rice, Purina One, and Purina One True Instinct Wet Food. This was a long and frustrating process and expensive one too. Each time he did well for two weeks or so and then one day he came back to the drooling and the seizures and I had to discard started bags of food and cans. In trying to find my dog's problem, I took him to the veterinary and he ran scans of his head and found no abnormalities. The veterinary suggested putting him on epilepsy drugs but I turned him down. So I continued feeding him his “Blue Buffalo Grain Free Freedom Beef Recipe” food. Then during the pandemic this brand became harder to find so I started my search again for a replacement. It was then when I saw in Amazon the "Instinct Original Grain Free Recipe with Real Beef Natural Dry Dog Food" and decided to give it a try and I am glad I did. It has been two months now since I started switching my dog over slowly from Blue Buffalo to this Instinct brand and he has not had the drooling and the seizures episodes (I am glad he never reached the point of a Bloat episode). I guess the secret with Instinct is that it has more digestible and higher quality ingredients, better food processing, and better formula than other brands. I noticed Instinct’s formula has a little bit of Taurine so I guess that helps too in preventing seizures. I am glad I found the “Instinct Original Grain Free Recipe with Real Beef Natural Dry Dog Food” to substitute my dog’s food and I highly recommend this brand. It’d be nice if Instinct’s formula had more Taurine.Price wise with Amazon’s Subscribe & Save an "Instinct Original Grain Free Recipe with Real Beef Natural Dry Dog Food" 20 pounds bag is $67.87 and a “Blue Buffalo Grain Free Freedom Beef Recipe” 24 pounds bag is $64.58.Copper, my dog is a five years old Beagle that weighs around 30 pounds, he is very happy now and says Thank You to Instinct the Raw Brand.

I have been feeding this dog food to my large black doberman mix dog for about 5 years. Besides this food, she eats carrots, apples, grain free dog treats. Something is her diet is good because she is a healthy 12 year old dog. Her fur coat is very shiny silky black. Beautiful dog! I mix it up with another dry dog food every few months. But this dog food is given to her the most, and I think she likes it the most. So, that is why I give it a high rating!

I have not tried it yet… but my puppies like it; for me, it smells okay… that’s how far I’ll go. But, right now - after confronted with having to judge the flavor - hold a minutes…Well, I ate a pebble. It’s hard in the teeth, but then, surprisingly, it grinds down much better with a sip of water. As a chef, I can taste a hint of dried hay, maybe old cereal and an indistinct side flavor; that weird aftertaste you get when licking a stone. (childhood memories) The scent immediately dissipates, however… it was not awful nor was it spectacular; I did however contemplated the banality of having to consume this for breakfast lunch and dinner…Back to my review; I would never get as excited and near “freak out” for this to be served to me three times a day… judging by the puppies; it’s f%#**# delicious!Afterthought: it makes for compacted, medium dry poop worms, that scoops up without mush and lifts off the carpet easily! That is a bonus point in itself.

Update July 30, 2018My original review mentioned that peas had been added to the product and I gave the product a review of 2 stars.Since then, we used the food and have had no issues with our dogs. I raised the rating from 2 to 4 stars. As a long term customer, it would have been "5 Star" had Instinct announced the changes in their product rather than just changing the packaging and shipping it.-----------------We have been purchasing the Instinct Original for a long time. This time, when opened, I noticed that the size of the pellets had increased. Oh Oh, they've changed the formula?Be aware that this product now contains peas! Unfortunately, we believe that one of our dogs is allergic to peas. I don't particularly want to find out so we are mulling over our next steps.

I’m rigorous about high quality, high protein food for my fur babies. I don’t mind paying more for a highly rated food; however, I also don’t want to overspend. This food is definitely more expensive than an average dog food, but it is much less expensive than comparable foods. It receives an excellent rating from the Dogfood Advisor website. I have this on Subscribe and Save for an extra discount. Even my mom’s very picky senior Maltipoo loves this food and will gobble it down, whereas many other foods are left in the bowl.

No issues from what I recall on this purchase. Seemed to be good dog food.