The Best Senior Dog Food: 7 Best
Dry, wet, grain-free, freeze-dried Feeding for your fur baby can be a complicated task when there are so many options available. As your dog gets older, its important to also consider the changes their body is going through. Your pooch shouldnt be eating the same kibble youve been buying since they graduated from puppy food. So, what is the best thing to feed an old dog? From preventative measures that keep your dog healthy to managing age-specific ailments that may sprout up, the best senior dog food is expertly designed to cater to older dogs needs.
Typically, dogs 7 years old and older are considered senior, but your dogs breed also plays a role in the classification.
As a generality, larger breeds don’t live as long as smaller breeds. So for a giant breed, 5 may be senior and for a very small dog it may be 10 — give or take, says Gary Richter, MS, DVM, CVC, CVA, owner and medical director of Montclair Veterinary Hospital and Holistic Veterinary Care in Oakland, California, and a holistic veterinary health expert with Rover, an online service that helps you find pet sitters and dog walkers.
Is your dog a senior? If so, it might be time to make the switchbut it can be hard to know what is the best thing to feed an old dog. Use this list of the best dog food for senior dogs, based on popularity and Chewy customer reviews, to guide you through your options.
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Best Senior Dry Dog Foods For Medium Breeds
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Wellness complete health natural senior dry dog food
Made in the U.S., this filler-free kibble is well-balanced, fortified with glucosamine and chondroitin for healthy joints.
Holistic select senior
As is characteristic of this brand, this dog food features digestive support probiotics, prebiotics and enzymes. And it has a chicken flavor that your senior dog is sure to love.
Merrick Grain Free Senior Real Chicken
Within a commitment to providing high protein, healthy fats, and industry-leading Omega 6 and Omega 3 levels for healthy skin and coat, Merrick Senior may be the right choice for an active senior dog
Blue Buffalo Life Protection Senior Dog Food
Featuring LifeSource blends with well-balanced antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals, such as L-Carnitine for healthy muscles, Blue Buffalo is a good choice for a medium-sized senior dog.
Diamond Naturals for senior dogs
With glucosamine and chondroitin for joint support as well as a healthy balance of protein, fats, and fiber, Diamond Natural is a nutrient-dense, power-packed kibble.
Canidae Life Stages dry dog food
If you want to keep your dog on the same diet throughout her life, Canidae life stages dry dog food provides optimal nutrition for puppies, adults, and seniors.
What Is The Best Food I Can Feed My Dog
It’s important to find a food your dog likes eating and thrives on, but this may involve a bit of trial and error. Individual dogs digest food differently. Some dogs do better with more protein, some need less. Some dogs can tolerate higher levels of fat others need less. Dogs also handle amounts of fiber differently. Your veterinarian or a veterinary nutritionist can help you sort out what diet will work best for your dog.
“Dogs are individuals,” says veterinarian Carol Osborne, of the Chagrin Falls Pet Clinic in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. “What works well for Dog A, might not work well for Dog B. If you want to know if a food is good for your pet, look at your pet. Your pet is a reflection of what he or she is eating.”
Outward signs of good health include clear eyes and nose, ears that aren’t smelly, and a coat that isn’t dry, flakey, or shedding excessively. Your dog should not be vomiting or experiencing diarrhea. “Soft stool is not normal,” Osborne says. “Bowel movements should be formed and homogenous. You should not be able to make out the pea, the piece of corn, the carrot. means the food has all been digested.”
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Blue Buffalo Wilderness Senior Chicken Recipe Grain
Top 5 Ingredients: 1. Deboned Chicken, 2. Chicken Meal, 3. Peas, 4. Pea Protein, 5. Pea Starch
Even a senior dogs food shouldnt be too different from their natural ancestral diet. This particular formula by Blue Wilderness incorporates a range of holistic ingredients to keep up with a high nutrient profile for your older dogs. With chicken, chicken meal, and turkey meal as the primary source of protein, the finest ingredients craft this grain-free formula to support your dogs health in her senior years.
What Can I Do To Satisfy My Picky Eater
One way to enhance your dogs appetite is to add tasty toppers to her food. Mixing a few tablespoons of a quality canned food to your dogs kibble can help.
Fresh, raw or cooked chicken or beef can also get your dog to drool over their meals again. Eggs are another popular appetizer scrambled or boiled with no salt, oil or seasonings, of course.
Toppers can safely make up about 10-20% of your dogs diet. Youll need to be mindful of added calories and nutrients.
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Does My Senior Dog Need Minerals
As we age, we are told we should get rid of the salt in our diets. Thats only partially true for dogs. People tend to consume higher sodium levels than dogs and to suffer from high blood pressure more often. Most commercial dog foods supply more sodium than dogs need, but dogs, like people, prefer some sodium in the diet. Still, dogs with hypertension, heart problems, and kidney problems usually need a low-sodium diet. In addition, these conditions may make it difficult for the dog to excrete excess sodium fed in his diet. Decreasing, not eliminating, sodium is usually a good idea for any senior, as long as the dog will still eat the diet.
Unlike people, most dogs dont seem to suffer from osteoporosis, at least not if theyve been maintained on a balanced diet with adequate calcium in earlier years. Thus, senior dogs eating a commercial diet do not need calcium supplementation.
Old dogs are more prone to dehydration, often because of health problems such as kidney disease that cause them to urinate more frequently, or because theyre taking medications such as diuretics for heart disease. Making sure the water is fresh, cool, and readily available can help encourage a dog to drink more.
In the end, it comes down to both quantity and quality of life. Never forget that while dogs must eat to live, many also live to eat, and sometimes we must make compromises. Remember the dogs motto: Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask whats for lunch.
Fromm Gold Reduced Activity & Senior Food
First 5 Ingredients: Duck, Chicken Meal, Chicken,Oatmeal, Brown Rice
If youre looking for a reduced sodium diet for your senior dog, this Fromm Family Gold Reduced Activity & Senior Formula might be a good option. This formula features fresh duck, chicken meal, and fresh chicken as the top three ingredients, so you can rest assured that it will meet your dogs needs for protein.
With oatmeal, brown rice, and pearled barley as the next three ingredients, this recipe is rich in digestible carbohydrates as well. For healthy fats, this formula contains salmon oil, an animal-based fat that is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and helps to balance out the omega-6 fatty acid content.
The Fromm Family Foods company is widely known throughout the pet food industry as an innovator. Not only was Fromm one of the first companies to develop a canine vaccine for distemper, but they were also a pioneer in developing the process for cooking meat and grain together which was used to produce some of the first kibble.
Fromm is a family-owned company committed to providing high-quality diets for pets to ensure that they live a long and happy life. Fromms dog food products can be divided into three different lines.
The Fromm Classic line of products only includes two recipes, one of which is a mature adult formula made with fresh chicken, whole eggs, and brown rice it is uniquely designed to meet the nutritional needs of older adult dogs.
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Best Senior Dog Food Of 2021
We are now going to shift our focus towards several of the highest-rated brands of dog food for senior dogs. These senior dog food formulas are best for older pups because of their health benefits. We have several great brands to highlight in addition to our choice for todays best senior dog food, and we will include the top features for each brand as well.
Halo Holistic Senior Chicken Recipe
The number one thing you’ll love about Halo is that, as a brand, it’s completely meal-and byproduct-free. Halo’s Senior Chicken Recipe Canned Dog Food focuses on premium ingredients, sustainable practices and only whole meats. To supplement the whole meat in this wet dog food recipe, there are non-GMO fruits, vegetables and added hydration. Better-for-you ingredients like chickpeas, green peas and wholesome grains make this recipe highly digestible, rendering it easier for mature dogs to eat. It also means dogs retain more of the food’s important nutrients. Other highlights include that it’s made in the U.S., never uses factory farming practices and comes in BPA-free cans. It’s an all-around win.
Buy at Petflow.
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Best Senior Dog Food: The Low
Old age creeps up on pooches the same way it does on humans. At first, you may think that your pup has gotten lazy. They no longer jump up and down like they used to, and their overall physique starts to change: their coat gets grayer by the day, and their movement slows down.
While you cant reverse the process of aging, you can help them adapt by adjusting the amount and type of food they consume to their energy levels.
To help you strike the perfect balance of nutrients for an older dog, we have done a little research in your stead by collecting information, testing various brands, and breaking down the best senior dog food brands we could find.
Here at Alpha Paw, we strive to offer the most comprehensive and bias-free info on all things canine, and we dont profit from sponsored links.
Diamond Naturals Dry Dog Food
Rating:
Diamond Naturals Adult Lamb Meal and Rice is one of 13 recipes included in our review of the Diamond Naturals dry product line.
- First 5 ingredients: Lamb meal, ground white rice, cracked pearled barley, sorghum, egg product
- Type: Grain-inclusive
- Price:About 0.93 per pound
- Best for: Adults dogs
- See all 13 available recipes
Diamond Naturals Adult derives the bulk of its meat protein from lamb meal. Our dry matter label analysis reveals the recipe contains 26% protein, 16% fat and 51% estimated carbs which yields a fat-to-protein ratio of about 61%.
Typical buyer reviewIve never seen my dogs so excited to eat. They fight over who gets the first bowl. Its also cheaper than what we were buying before for the same size bag! And with 3 big dogs we were struggling between price and quality. This is the best of both worlds.
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Diamond Naturals Dry Kibble
Maybe this is even one of the best dog food for senior dogs even despitethis is quite an affordable feed of a superior nature. Numerous feedbacksreport that after switching to the first bag of this dry snack, their dog lostexcess weight, which was negatively impacting the joints. At the time when vetsprescribe medicine and supplements like glucosamine and chondroitin, this feedalready has them in the list of ingredients. And a simple formula of chicken,eggs, and oatmeal cause no digestive problems due to limitation in the numberof products mixed. The disadvantage seems to be that it uses little of namedmeats, including little animal-sourced protein.
Taking Care Of Your Senior Dogs Skin And Coat
The skin of your elderly dogs doesnt produce as many natural oils as it used to in order to be supple, hydrated, and supports a shiny fur. Try to use a delicate, hydrating shampoo and brush your dogs coat as often as possible to stimulate oil secretion. You can also use special skincare products to better hydrate the pets skin.
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Instinct Raw Boost Grain
You can rarely see raw pieces in dog food for senior dogsnowadays. However, it was their choice before expensive and branded snacks wereinvented, and even before the first meeting with a human centuries ago. Rawmeans without heat treatment, meaning more primary nutrients are preserved.Meals packed with protein provide natural probiotics. Yes, it is not anaverage-price kibble, but this is the best possible choice for your dog.However, a lot of customers complain about not being sure about the rawcomponents being present. After all, it is up to you to decide.
Senior Dog Food Buyers Guide
Nutrition is a highly important factor that cannot be ignored across the lifespan of your beloved dog. And when it comes to feeding your senior dog, it should be as important as feeding yourself or a family member. Even when old age takes a toll on your seniors health, you can still keep your dog happy, active, and healthy by ensuring they receive the best nutrition that will keep their immune system healthy, their joints flexible, coat shiny and sleek, and their digestive system smooth.
It is, however, important to note that different breeds may hit the senior stage at different ages and switching to a specified senior diet right away may not be appropriate. The key is to watch and observe if there are clear signs of aging before making that transition.
In this buyers guide, we will discuss all the important aspects related to buying the best senior dog foods to save you from getting all overwhelmed by the selection you can pick from.
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Blue Homestyle Recipe Wet Senior Dog Food
This is a wonderful option if your senior friend fancies wet dog food once in a while. Blue Homestyle Recipe Wet Senior Dog Food contains real deboned chicken that offers all the key amino acids your pet needs every single day. The whole, hearty grains such as barley and brown rice provide the complex, high-quality carbs for optimal energy levels. The fruits and veggies used in this formula are packed with all the essential vitamins and minerals your dog needs for a balanced nutrition. There is no soy, chicken by-product, wheat, corn, artificial preservatives, flavor, or color added to the recipe.
The first ingredient of Iams ProActive Health Senior Dry Dog Food for Dogs is farm-raised real chicken, which makes it another great choice for your senior furry friend. The antioxidants support a strong immune system, the prebiotics and fiber blend maintains a healthy digestion, while the chondroitin sulfate and glucosamine keep your pets bones and joints flawless during this life stage. In addition, the easily digestible, crunchy kibble takes care of your friends coat and skin strengthens his teeth, bones, and muscles, and reduces plaque. This recipe is specially formulated to fit older dogs unique nutritional and wellness needs.
Whats The #1 Cause Of Food
Although it contributes to health issues in dogs of all ages
Obesity is the #1 cause of chronic disease and premature death in seniors.
Extra weight means your dogs joints have to work harder and they may already be inflamed from arthritis, hip dysplasia or a luxated knee cap.
Unfortunately, dogs are naturally more prone to obesity as they age. According to the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science3
Because of decreased physical activity and slowed metabolism, older dogs need 20% fewer total calories than do middle-aged adult dogs.
So, a low calorie food can help your dog lose or maintain her weight without feeling hungry all the time.
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Best Dog Food For Older Dogs
Our dogs love us unconditionally and are loyal to us through joy and sorrow. But, as they age, there comes a time when the balance is tilted to their increased need for attention, care, and affection. There are a lot of things that change in the life of our senior dogs therefore, we have to adapt the way we take care of them, being more patient, attentive, meticulous, and gentle.
In this article, well talk about taking care of older dogs. Also, well analyze a list of top-notch dog foods for senior dogs, such as grain-free dog food and other high-quality dog food, and help you decide which one best suits your friends needs.
Contents
Best For Sensitive Stomachs: Canidae Grain
As your fur baby ages, you may find their stomach gets more particular. This Canidae formula is grain-free and made without corn, wheat, or soy. Youll like that its primary ingredients are all sourced in the U.S. and are all things you can pronouncechicken, lentils, fish meal, etc. After its cooked, the kibble is fortified with probiotics for an additional boost to your pups digestive health, plus antioxidants, fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals. The kibble pieces are small enough for dogs of all sizes to happily chow down on them.
At 359 kcal per cup, this Wellness CORE formula is one of the least caloric varieties available. But don’t let that fool you: with a high concentration of animal protein, along with nutritional supplements like vitamins A and E, omega-fatty acid 3 and 6 from salmon oil, plus glucosamine hydrochloride and chondroitin sulfate for healthy joints, your pup wont go hungry.
Its made without artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives. Its also grain-free, gluten-free, and contains no wheat, soy, or corn.
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