What’s The Best Food For My Dog? (Part 2)

February 11, 2020

Continuing on from Part 1 of our blog “What’s The Best Food For A Dog?”, here we’re going to look at the costs of feeding a dog. If you haven’t already read Part 1 of this series, we suggest you take a look at it as we explored the pros and cons of different forms of food.

A quick recap of our tadaa! method:

4 Simple Steps
Step 1) Decide what type of food fits your lifestyle
Step 2) Figure out your monthly budget
Step 3) Try each food within your budget
Step 4) Check your dog’s fur and poo condition

Now in Step 2, we discuss budgeting for pet food and we go through a rough guide of how much each type of food could cost you every month.

When setting yourself a budget, it is important to be realistic about what you can afford. Your dog(s) will be with you for the next decade or two, and you want to be able to provide your best consistently throughout your dog’s life.

Expensive pet food does not always equate quality or suitability, so instead look for something that suits your dog within a budget that is comfortable for your lifestyle.

Monthly Cost of Feeding a Dog

Below is a monthly cost estimate based on the size of your dog:

Dog's Weight	Dry Food	Wet Food	Raw Food	Freeze-Dried	Dehydrated/Air Dried
5kg	RM50 - RM95	RM120 - RM450	RM110 - RM170	RM355	RM190 - RM350
10kg	RM85 - RM165	RM180 - RM600	RM225 - RM340	RM800	RM380 - RM460
20kg	RM140 - RM185	RM300 - RM900	RM450 - RM675	RM1600	RM765 - RM915
30kg	RM190 - RM370	RM420 - RM1500	RM675 - RM1015	RM2310	RM1275 - RM1405

*This guide does not have estimates for home-cooked food as that is based on the quality and variety of ingredients used.

This is just a rough estimate and can vary quite a bit across brands and formulas, depending on a number of factors. For instance the packaging size you choose will make a difference as it is typically cheaper when purchased in larger packs of 10kg and upwards.

How much your dog needs to eat will also affect how much you spend on dog food. This depends on how active your dog is, and whether or not your dog needs to lose or gain weight.

Once you’ve decided how much you can set aside monthly for your dog’s food, you can take a look at all the brands and formulas that are within that budget.

For example if you have a 10kg dog and would be happy to spend up to RM300 a month, then you would consider dry food, wet food and raw food or a combination of them (refer to table). If you’re considering only dry food, then you can start with the high end brands like Orijen, Farmina, Absolute Holistic and more.

Next Steps

On to Step 3, once you’ve identified a few brands within your budget, Choose 1 and try it out for a minimum of 4-6 weeks and finally evaluate your dog’s poo and fur/skin condition within that time period.

Why 4-6 weeks? While your dog’s poo will be easy enough to evaluate, it often takes time for you to see the results of the food on your dog’s skin and coat. We recommend trying a few brands/formulas in this way and you can then decide if any of them works particularly well or not for your dog.

If you find that there are a few brands or formulas that are great for your dog, we recommend rotating formulas and brands. We’ll follow up with another blog post later on why we think it’s good to give your dog a rotating diet.

In the next part of this series, we will go into more detail about the brands and formulas that you can consider within each budget range. In the meantime, feel free to contact us if you need some help finding a suitable pet food for both you and your dog.

Note:

We have made the estimations above based on how much you will need to feed your dog using the feeding guides/recommendations provided by manufacturers. Because this differs according to ingredients and formulation, we would suggest that you always refer to the feeding guide provided to make sure your dog is not over- or under-eating.



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