The Honest Kitchen review: feeding a ruthless, toothless 14-year-old dog
Margot died in June 2023.Gloria died in December 2025.
Mingo is what’s left of a senior rescue pack that used to be a threesome, and somewhere in the months since he became the last man standing, he decided that made him king.He’s 14.He has no teeth.
And he has developed some serious opinions when it comes to what he will and will not eat.That combination is a specific kind of problem.A dog with a full set of K-9s who gets picky is an annoyance.
A dog with none who gets picky becomes a math problem, because the choice of food he can physically eat is already small, and then you have to find the subset of that pool he’ll actually dig into. Kibble is out.Freeze-dried chunks are a maybe.
Most senior dry formulas are just smaller, drier kibble, which does nothing to stop a dog from nubbing it with his gums.So I’ve spent months buying different types of food and throwing most of it away.From $22 for three pouches (about 1.7 pounds) of expert-formulated homemade food to over $100 for a pound of personalized, human-grade, fresh-dried food with a soft texture, I wasn’t above pulling out all the stops.The Honest Kitchen is the first thing that seems to have stuck.I’ve been testing a few products from the brand: Wholegrain Beef, Oat, and Salmon; Wholegrain Chicken, Oat, and Salmon Senior formula; Bone Broth Pour-Over Toppers; and the Butcher Block Pâté.
The dehydrated bags are the actual meals.The other three just help make sure he eats them.Measure out the dry mix, add warm water, stir and wait three minutes.
That’s it.It’s seriously very easy.It comes out as a soft, loose mash, and just how loose it is depends entirely on how much water you use, which is the whole reason this format works for a dog with no teeth.
Nothing needs to be chewed or broken down.It’s also not raw, which surprised me, but I appreciate it.The Honest Kitchen says the proteins are cooked to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees before dehydration.
The company’s ...