CaniSource Dog Food (Dehydrated)

My dog seems to like the food but has a dark and soft stool. She has been on this food for 1 1/2 months. This brand was  recommended to us by our vet. Has anyone else had this problem?

You know that this food has rice, barley and oats – and you said your dog is allergic to grains.  There are other grain free dehydrated/freeze dried foods to chose from.

I’m pretty sure it’s normal.  It’s the iron in the food.  Happened to our Great Dane to.

hello, i have a 4 month old newfie puppy who from birth has been eating canisource and nrg dehyrated food and been doing very well on both both are quit expensive since my newf is eating 6 cups a day. I figure you are what you eat and in the long run I hope for a very healthy dog. Few vet bills Iam very happy with both and iam glad to see people are now really lookin into what they are feeding their pets

Quick thing to point out about the calories/cup with CaniSource is that the actual weight of a cup of CaniSource is less than a cup of another type of extruded dry food (take a cup of CaniSource and a cup of an extruded kibble and weigh the difference – you’ll see that CaniSource is about 1/3 – 1/2 less mass).

My 45 lbs dog eats CaniSource and gets 1 1/2 cup per day and she’s at the perfect weight. We don’t give her treats regularly either so you can see you don’t have to give a lot. Some dogs will have higher metabolisms and will require more food than others though so it’s a good idea to monitor your dog’s weight whenever feeding a new food. If they gain weight, reduce the amount fed and if they lose weight (unless they need to!) then increase the amount fed. It’s important to mention that recommended feeding guidelines are simply that – recommendations.

Also, the meat content in the food is 70% – 15% grains, and about 15% fruits and vegetables. This is according to the manufacturer and is printed on the front of the box (contains 70% meat). This is very similar to the make-up of a lot of raw diets as well so to say that once the moisture is removed the meat percentage is way less than the grains is not an accurate statement either as all the ingredients are in their raw state – the vegetables and fruits all have their moisture as well when put in the recipe. Granted, the rice, oats, & barley are dry, but we’re only talking 15% of the recipe. So to degrade this diet, saying contains more grains than meat is incorrect. This is not processed like standard kibble. How could a raw diet that has 70% meat (very similar to a lot of the 5 star rated raw diets) be degraded just because the moisture is removed? I guess I’m not following that logic…

Honest Kitchen Thrive and Love formulas have over 500 calories per cup. It is also dehydrated raw. I’m not sure how the price compares to Canisource.

After years of trying to find a food that my 11 year old English Springer Spaniel would actually eat, I tried Canisource at the recommendation of a specialty shop owner. Kellie my dog is very active as she is a hunting dog, and she was always having trouble keeping her weight on, despite feeding her constantly. Kellie loves the food and eats it completely. She is 35 lbs and give her 3 cups a day which she eats readily. She is now putting on weight as the vet told me she is under weight. I am going to stick with this food until my dog tells me different. Her stools are smaller and less frequent. I am interested to see if the claim that the food will help prevent grass burns, as Kellie likes to use the whole yard.

Hello Kimberly,
I was just getting ready to run out and buy a big box of Cani-Source. My dog tried a sample size last year and loved it, and we’ve been buying it off and on since. His stools are actually an ochre-colour (medium yellow/tan colour) when he eats it. on his vet food it’s a mahogany colour (a medium bown)
He eats less of it than his regular ‘vet’ approved food. maybe about 2/3 of the amount. He also did not like Fromm very much. I supplement his dog food with small amounts of plain chicken for treats…he’s about 10 lbs, so the chicken would amount to less than 3 tbs a day.
My dog is a a real meat-eater and tends to shun veggies. In the past i”ve made my own wet dog food. Using a Vita-Mix blender I combine cooked chicken, rice, boiled carrots, raw apple. I pack it into a square container, and cut it into daily portion squares usually used as treats. I think a good way to judge if the diet is good, is by the appearance of the stools, the vitality of your pet and the general ‘happiness’ and demeanor of your little friend. Yes, do not overfeed your dog!!

Hi.. I have switched my dog to the CaniSource after she took a real liking to it at Woofstock. It is quite expensive and I was surprised to see it had such a low rating as dehydrated is suppose to be better than dried. The one thing that concerned me after the switch was that her stool turned black. I’m not sure if it is because the food is darker than what I was feeding her before (Fromm grainfree surf and turf) or if she has some sort of allergy or problem with the food. I plan to try switching her back to see if that fixes the problem, however I was wondering if it was normal for dogfood to have a strong effect on a dogs stool? Other than that.. I find that my dog eats more and more happily than she did on the Fromm. She went from 1 bowl of Fromm every day or two from a constantly filled dog dish to eating the whole bowl full in the morning when I put it out and begging for more in the evening when I come home. Is the increase in her appetite a good thing or does this indicate that the food is not well balanced? She does not appear to be gaining weight despite the double quantity of food she is eating. I’m a little nervous of this dog food over all despite loving the idea of a food re-hydrated with water. I’m interested to hear what other people have experienced.

I’m a bit surprised the fiber is not higher, with Oats, apples, and carrots in it. One point I do like is that is doesn’t have potato in it, which I think is being overly used in the grain free foods and may carry its own set of problems.

Fed CaniSource to my dog when I lived in Canada and wish I could get it here in Connecticut. It is very similar in concept to what the North American Indians called “Pemmican”. I agree the garlic is something that can be left out.

Confession: since it is labeled “fit for human consumption”, and being a meat eating “O” blood type, I too occasionally munched on it and found it intrinsically satisfying, and my dog got more interested in eating it when he saw me eating it too

Hi folks. I used the info you provided in your review here and asked the folks at Canisource to comment about the concerns that were brought up. I thought i would post their response below for you.

1. Even dehydrated, the quantity of meat (beef) is still in much higher quantity than the grains in the food. You wouldn’t get 27% proteins in the food if it was otherwise. Some companies can cheat the protein test by adding corn in the food, but since we don’t, you can feel secure that it is indeed a meat based food, and not a grain based one. In fact, grains only account for 15% of the total recipe. In our particular case, the argument about the dehydrated meat being lower down the list in incorrect. Another way to validate this is by looking at the quantity of stools your dog makes. Frequency is normally down to once a day with CaniSource instead of two-three times a day with other foods. In fact, stools are the same as with raw food, which everyone would agree has more meat than grain.

2. People are correct in saying that white rice is less nutritious than brown rice. However, one important detail that is not mentioned is that dogs lack the enzymes necessary to get the extra nutrients found in the outside layer of brown rice. Using brown rice is better marketing wise because people assume it’s better for their dog since it is better for humans. The downside to using it in dog food is that the dog’s digestive system will work overtime to process the extra fibers, hence putting extra strain on the digestive system for nothing since the dog is not able to get those extra nutrients. This is a perfect example of human food marketing being incorrectly applied to dog food.

3. It is also correct that we don’t add probiotics in the food. The reason is quite simple: we don’t need to. We have researched the idea quite extensively when we created the food, and finally decided against using them for a few reasons. For starters, all the foods with probiotics were tested and found to have no probiotics left alive in the kibble by the time they went to the lab. Probiotics have a very limited lifespan and do not last. Quantities used would have to be very significant, and you would have a best before date of only three months. Second, even if used in proper quantities, the benefits at the end of the day are insignificant for our food. CaniSource is already one of the easiest food to digest for dogs. The fact that all ingredients are certified for human consumption and that we dehydrate at a very low temperature means that our food is nutrient rich, and does not contain fillers. This means dogs only eat 50% of what they would eat of another food. The major advantage is that the digestive system is not overtasked by fillers, and can concentrate on getting the nutrients. The carrots we use are also rich in natural probiotics. So in the end, there is no reason on a nutritional stand point to add any. The only advantage of putting probiotics in CaniSource would be for marketing reasons, but we don’t work that way.

4. Most of the minerals are chelated. However, this is not very significant once again with CaniSource since we add very little vitamins and minerals. In fact, the list is the shortest of the foods I have seen on the market, and the quantities we put in are very minute. We could skip vitamins and minerals altogether and it would take a few years before any deficiency would appear in dogs. Since we use certified human grade ingredients, and preserve the nutrients by dehydrating the food at very low temperature, there’s very little need to add vitamins and minerals.

If you have a good basic food, made with fresh ingredients, then you don’t need to add a whole bunch of extras to it to try to make it look good. Our approach has always been to try to get as close as possible to cooking fresh for your dog every day. In fact, our food is nothing more than dehydrated raw, except that you have the reassurance that 100% of the ingredients are certified for human consumption. And as of writing this, I have yet to see another food company in North America put that in writing.

“Compared to the high-heat extrusion equipment used to make kibble, it’s appropriate to acknowledge this company’s low-temperature dehydration process.”

Hey, you should add something like that statement to Bil-Jac, too. Then people can’t act like you aren’t aware that their food is baked…