The Honest Kitchen - pet food with a passion

Buying pet food online

By Jennifer Gardner

If your idea of feeding Fido is picking up a bag of dog kibble at the supermarket, you may be amazed to learn that there is a growing business devoted to selling pet food online and having it shipped straight to your home.

A couple of years ago, Pets.com offered this service. But they, like many other Internet flops, spent too much on advertising with a cute sock puppet and not enough on solid business growth. When they joined several other “dot-bombs” of the late 90s and early 2000s, the principals claimed that people didn’t want to have heavy containers of pet food shipped to their homes.

That’s not entirely true. What people don’t care to pay shipping on is common brands that can be found locally. But special foods, such as those prepared by The Honest Kitchen in San Diego, Calif., are growing in popularity.

“Our main focus is actually creating natural, wholesome canine diets that replicate to a certain extent, the diet that a wolf or wild dog would eat in nature,” Honest Kitchen’s director of marketing Lucy Postins explained on a recent CNN program. “We use minumally processed, whole ingredients that are gently dehydrated rather than extruded or canned.”

The company sells natural and grain-free offerings that mimic the popular Atkins Diet for humans – low in carbohydrates and high in protein, aimed at growing and energetic dogs. Their three main products – called Verve, Force and Embark – are all made of human-grade food and come in a dehydrated form. You prepare the food by adding water and, if desired, additional meat.

“Dehydration also eliminates the safety concerns often associated with the storage and transportation of raw frozen diets, and there are none of the intrinsic astronomical shipping charges,” the company’s Web site, www.thehonestkitchen.com, claims.

None of the company’s foods contain wheat, corn, soy, rice or beet pulp, all of which are common allergens for dogs.

[At the time of press] No resellers are currently operating in Oregon. A 10-pound reusuable bucket of the grain-free Embark, which contains the equivalent of 43 pounds of fresh food, costs an exorbatant $72 plus $14 shipping to my zip code in Corvallis.

It is, however, much easier to prepare than whole foods or raw foods and may be well received by dogs with allergy problems. Still, I can’t see spending this much to feed a large-breed dog.

Let’s say that you’re a vegetarian, or a vegan, and the thought of preparing any meat for your pet to eat is an issue for you. Try VegePet.com, a Web site where you can order vegetarian dog foods and vegan cat foods and supplements. The jury is still out on just whether a cat can thrive on a vegan diet, as it needs an amino acid found mostly in meat products called taurine. Advocates claim that with the proper supplementation, you never have to feed your pets meat.

Ten pounds of Vegecat Kibble mix costs $42. Shipping via UPS Ground adds another $6.55. The company’s Web site suggests that will last the average cat 132 days, which makes it not so high priced – until you look at all the supplements you need to buy in addition to the dry food. A 15-oz. supply of Vegecat supplement is $15 and will last three months, and a 17-oz. portion of Vegecat pH costs $16 and also lasts three months.

Let’s not leave out the smaller critters. Order the finest pellets and hay for rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas, prairie dogs and rats at Oxbow Hay, www.oxbowhay.com. To be fair, Oxbow is recommended by many veterinarians for quality and is available locally at Eastgate Veterinary Clinic and Animal Crackers Pet Supply. But it can still cost a bundle if you have multiple animals and need more than 10-pound bags.

I order my rabbit food from an Oxbow competitor, American Pet Diner, because their rabbit pellets contain no molasses (best for one of my sugar-challenged pets). I buy in 50-pound bags – which cost $21.99 each with an additional $19 to ship. Hay is similarly expensive, and must be ordered in if you want something unavailable in this area.

If you are interested in purchasing a pet food product online, it’s always a good idea to go over the nutritional information with your vet, especially if your pet is very young, very old, has allergies or suffers from a chronic disease. Inspect all shipments carefully for holes or tears in the packaging, as careless shipping and storage could cause food spoilage. You should also be prepared to toss the food out – no matter how much you spent – if your pet won’t eat it.

Jennifer Gardner is a freelance writer and editor and a board member at Heartland Humane Society in Corvallis. She enjoys writing about all animals but specializes in rabbits and other small pets. If you have questions or comments about this column or other pet issues, please e-mail Jennifer at jennifer@visualpeople.com or write c/o The Gazette-Times.