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.
How does dehydrated dog food work for a dog with no teeth?
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 math is that a pound of dry mix yields about 4 cups of food, so a 7-pound bag yields roughly 28 cups, and it expands back to about 28 pounds of food once you add the recommended amount of water.
I have been trying to stick to the recommended water amount, but I’ve gone a little more soupy, and Mingo seems to like it either way.
Beef, chicken or fish: Which recipe is better?
It’s a matter of taste … with a bit of price baked in.
The Wholegrain Beef, Oat, and Salmon dehydrated senior recipe runs $39.99 for 2 dry pounds and $89.99 for 7 dry pounds. The chicken version of the same formula is $39.99 and $79.99, respectively. Same idea, just a $10 difference for the same big size.
Ingredients diverge more than the names suggest. The beef recipe leads with beef, oats, barley, flaxseed, potatoes, eggs, carrots and salmon, and it skips peas entirely.
The chicken recipe leads with chicken, barley, oats, potatoes, flaxseed and peas, and adds bananas. So he’s eating better than me during my busy days.
Both contain chondroitin sulfate, taurine, L-carnitine, fish oil for DHA, turmeric and a probiotic, which is the senior-specific part of the bag. These help with joints, brain, heart and muscle retention. Calories land around 420 per cup, and protein is about 26.5%.
Are the Pour Overs actually worth it, or is it just glorified gravy?
The Bone Broth Pour-Overs in Beef and the Pumpkin Pour-Overs in Turkey both run $33.48 for a case of twelve 5.5-ounce boxes, which works out to $2.79 a box. Each box is about two servings.
The ingredient lists are short enough to read out loud. Beef bone broth, beef, carrots, butternut squash, tapioca, thyme, sage. That’s the whole beef one, about 100 calories per box. The turkey pumpkin is turkey bone broth, turkey, pumpkin, apples, butternut squash, tapioca, potato, cinnamon and ginger, at just about 75 calories.
Neither is a complete meal, and the brand is clear that toppers should stay under 10% of the diet. They keep for about three days in the fridge after opening and stay pourable, which matters when your dog eats a tablespoon at a time.
It’s worth flagging that one reviewer on the brand’s own site complained the carton is difficult to open without wearing the broth. I had no problems, though, after reading the instructions and tearing along the perforated line.
How is the Butcher Block Pâté for a dog with no teeth?
Perfect? This one is the best fit of the five on texture alone. The Turkey and Autumn Veggies Butcher Block Pâté is $25.74 for six 10.5-ounce boxes, or $4.29 each. Turkey, turkey bone broth, turkey liver, spinach, apples, carrots, brown rice and pumpkin provide a texture that is ground rather than congealed, thickened with agar-agar instead of gums, gelatin or carrageenan.
It’s a complete wet food, not a topper, and the feeding guidance is just shy of one box per 10 pounds of body weight per day. For my Chihuahua, that means almost a single box is a full day of food, sometimes more, because we certainly don’t deprive him of treats.
Is The Honest Kitchen more expensive than other dog food?
Put simply, yes. But less than the sticker suggests, and it depends on which bag you buy.
The 7-pound beef senior bag is $12.86 a pound dry. That sounds brutal until you rehydrate it. The Honest Kitchen’s own feeding chart for adult dehydrated recipes puts toy breeds under 10 pounds at a quarter cup to a half cup of dry mix per day.
At half a cup, the 7-pound beef bag costs about $1.61 a day and lasts close to two months. The chicken works out to roughly $1.43.
Against fresh subscription food, that’s competitive.
Petful’s February 2026 pricing analysis put The Farmer’s Dog at $2.31 a day at the very bottom of its range, for the smallest dogs. Ollie lands in the $2 to $3 range for a 10-pound Chihuahua by most current reporting. Neither is shelf-stable, and both require freezer space I refuse to give up.
The only potential downfall is the small bag. That same beef recipe at 2 pounds, or 8 dry cups, is $39.99, which is $5 per cup, compared to $3.21 per cup for the 7-pound bag. Buy the small one first to see if your dog will eat it, then stick with the big bag. It’s worth finding the room.
The real budget creep is the toppers because at $2.79 a box, a daily pour-over will add about $85 a month on top of the food. After seeing how much Mingo loved them, they are reserved for the days he thinks he wants to get picky again (or if I have been at work for a lot longer than usual, waxing poetic about my love for dogs).
I’m not offended by the price of the toppers or add-ons. They are little treats, and little treats are always worth a little more.
Is The Honest Kitchen worth it for a senior dog?
Yes. No question. But for my toothless 14-year-old who has started sending food back to the kitchen, the calculation may be different from yours, because the alternative isn’t cheaper food; it’s food he doesn’t eat. The 90-day money-back guarantee takes most of the risk out of finding out which one lands, and shipping is free on orders over $49, so two bags clear easily.
For a dog working with a normal mouth and no strong feelings, it’s up to you. There are more and more healthy food options, and a lot of cheaper dried kibble could do the job, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be the best for your dogs.
Other food I’ve tried usually goes over well for a few days, then he may be tired of it, but I really think this customizable texture, plus the delicious recipes, are making all the difference. He couldn’t be happier for his bowl to runneth over, and for a toothless dog who has always been a fan of food, his happiness is all I care about.
Mingo only has a couple of years of dinners left if we’re lucky. Not to be morbid, but I’m not having kids, so this little bugger gets what otherwise might be a college fund, and I’d much rather spend $90 on a long-lasting bag he finishes than $40 on one I’ll just have to throw out.
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