Treat Review: Orijen Freeze-Dried Food

Courtesy of Chewy.com, we have sampled Orijen's new(ish) freeze-dried food offering and would like to tell you about it!

First of all, for a dog of Elka's size, the amount of Orijen's freeze-dried food would not be feasible to feed her regularly. She would need 6 or 7 (I think) of the little "food pucks", and there are only so many per bag. As a travel food, or something to keep in an emergency "go bag", it would be a great solution. However, since I wasn't planning to get Princess accustomed to food gravy of this quality, I confess I just broke it up and used it for treats.

You know how in dog training, sooner or later people talk about using "high value" treats? Well, that's what Orijen freeze-dried counts as for Elka. To say she loved it is a sorry understatement! (though it did her breath no favors, which is something we don't normally have issues with).

Even breaking it up in my hands, it left no smell or residue on my skin. This is of varying importance; I often find myself smelling of cheese and hot dogs after walking Elka, or having a training session with her. The Orijen food has chicken hearts and livers in it, dried herring, and other potentially smelly things. So I figured I'd mention it!

Of course, as this is meant to be food, it's important to feed something like this sparingly so as to avoid adding to the pet obesity epidemic. But as Elka gets some of her food through training anyway, this worked well for us.

As always, Orijen uses great ingredients in their products, and while they're not making products in the USA, it is made in Canada, which is still closer (and better) than China. 

FTC disclosure: Chewy.com sent me the dog food for review, but did not otherwise compensate me for this post.