Pure Pet Food review: A personalised wet dog food with the convenience of dry kibble

Finding the right dog food can be an expensive endeavour, especially when your pet takes a liking to a new food, only to decide two weeks later that it’s not for them. Matters are complicated even further if your pet has allergies or intolerances, or even skin conditions or diseases such as pancreatitis.

Subscription service Pure Pet Food claims to help in many of these circumstances, with its personalised wet food offering that comes as a dehydrated powder. We put it to the test.

Pure Pet Food review: How does it work?

Pure Pet Food is a dog food subscription service, where bags of food can be sent out at four- to eight-weekly intervals. The service claims to be personalised for your dog, meaning food is tailored to their specific needs. What this really involves is cutting out certain foods that your dog can’t have and calculating their portion sizes based on their needs.

The process of ordering is incredibly simple. You input information about your dog’s breed, age, weight, body condition and how much exercise they get, and then choose any ingredients they can’t eat. Using this information, Pure calculates how much your dog needs per day, and which meal recipes might be best for them. There are lamb, chicken, beef and salmon recipes, each of which include an array of fruit and vegetables.

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Pure Pet Food review: What do you get for your money?

For my 12.5kg Manchester Terrier, who gets two hours of exercise per day and a few treats throughout, four weeks’ worth of Pure Pet Food costs £53.98, which works out at around £1.92 per day. It’s certainly not the cheapest dog food on the market, but there are discounts for bulk purchases. For example, if you order six weeks’ worth of food for a dog of the same size and activity level, it will cost £1.76 per day, and eight weeks’ worth of food costs £1.54 per day. Portion sizes (and therefore cost) vary depending on the size and activity level of your dog.

Pure Pet Food review: What’s the food like?

The first thing you’ll notice about Pure Pet Food is that it smells unpleasant. Although this isn’t uncommon in dog food, once in the bowl with water it really does start to smell quite strong. This did, however, mean it captured the attention of my often fussy Manchester Terrier, who wolfed his first portion down so fast he threw it right back up ten minutes later. We had a much more successful second attempt after switching to a slow feeding bowl.

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Pure Pet Food comes as a powder to which you add water to create a wet meal – a little like a protein shake for dogs, with visible fruits and vegetables in the food. I noticed pieces of strawberry in the chicken recipe, for instance, along with specs of green veg. Once mixed with a little warm water and stirred in the bowl, the food has a paste-like consistency – ideal for feeding on a lickimat or similar slow-feeding tools.

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Pure Pet Food review: What did we like?

My dog has always preferred wet food but it hasn’t always been convenient for me as we travel a lot together. I like that Pure Pet Food is an alternative to traditional wet dog food, coming in a dried form that can be rehydrated to create a wet meal. My dog, Arty, seems to love it, and his eliminations have certainly become healthier-looking since switching to Pure. The convenience of the regular delivery is brilliant.

Pure Pet Food review: How could it be improved?

Price wise, Pure Pet Food is significantly more expensive than mainstream brands available in supermarkets (Harrington’s grain-free wet food, for example, works out around £1.13 per day), so if your dog can and will eat supermarket brands, it might not be necessary to spend that much.

While the personalisation on the delivery box and the individual bags of food is a nice touch, it’s perhaps an unnecessary expense that is being passed onto the consumer, and the food would be just as good without my dog’s name printed on the packaging.

Pure Pet Food is, however, cheaper than other popular subscription pet foods. Butternut Box works out around £2.08 per day and is less convenient as it comes frozen. Bella & Duke comes out at a similar price, but the raw diet is a controversial one and like Butternut Box is also delivered frozen.

The food’s strong smell makes it less appealing than feeding dry food, too, which rarely stinks out the kitchen.

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Pure Pet Food review: Should I buy it for my dog?

If your pet has allergies or specific health conditions, or is a little overweight, this pet food is a responsible choice. While it’s not cheap, it’s certainly worth the money to give your pet the best, healthiest diet possible while taking all their various conditions into consideration. If your dog doesn’t have any health-related requirements, allergies or fussiness, Pure Pet Food is still a good bet as long as you don’t mind the higher price.

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