Travel & Camping Friendly Pure Dehydrated Dog Food Review

June 29, 2016 Tiffy Bryan

What we tested

Pure Dehydrated Pet Food Chicken Dinner
Price: £24.99
Ingredients: Chicken (25%), potato, carrot, parsnip, chicken liver, green beans, apple, cabbage, minerals
Protein: 26%
Crude oils & fats: 11%
Weight: 2kg (8kg prepared)

GET 50% OFF ALL FOOD PLANS FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY (UPDATED 18/02/2020)

Find out more or buy it here.

I’m very picky about what food I feed to my fussy Boxer-cross dog Norman. He has a rather sensitive stomach, which I have learned the hard way! So when Pure Food got in touch and asked if Norman would like to try their natural dehydrated dog food, before I said yes, I busied myself in researching the ingredients.

From educating myself in the past about dog nutrition and health, I have a fair few criteria for any gfood I feed to my sensitive boy, including;

Free of grains
Free of wheat
High meat content
Quality ingredients
Hypoallergenic

I was happy to learn that Pure Food met my criteria. Good start.

Camping & Travel Friendly Dog Food

One reason I liked the idea of trying hydrated Pure dog food for Norman was the allure of taking light weight food on trips away. Most weekends we are normally away with the Norman either camping or on our boat.

It’s a pain having to lug around tins, or trays of dog food with all your other gear. Welcome to the number one benefit of hydrated food- less heavy stuff to take!

Yes £24.99 for 2kg dog food sounds mega expensive, but it makes up 8kg of food after it’s re-hydrated. I’m a sucker for design, and off the bat I really liked the packaging of Pure’s food. It made me think that with the effort they’d taken in the branding, hopefully that would reflect on the quality of the food inside, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Preparation & Taste Test

Before we went away camping armed with our Pure, we made sure to take out the recommended amount of scoops of the food in it’s powder form to make up 3 meals. It’s certainly a lot lighter than the food we usually take I can tell you.

The food in it’s powder state has a strong smell, and once I added the warm water as per the instructions, Norman actually came in sniffing at the air.

The packaging says you have to add warm water (correct ratios given using nice illustrations on the box) and leave for around 10-15 minutes to re-hydrate. Unfortunately the wait wasn’t enjoyable for Norman!

He was whining like a baby as if to say, “Mum, stop teasing me, give me the food already!” This was a tad grating, especially as we were on a camping trip with 5 other friends. I had to keep apologising for his impatience, but it obviously smelt good to his doggy nose!

I can report that from the first time we fed Pure chicken dinner to him on the camping trip 2 weeks ago, to today, he loves it!

Norman isn’t a big ‘foodie’. He has to really like food to gobble it down in one sitting. I can report that from the first time we fed Pure chicken dinner to him on the camping trip 2 weeks ago, to today, he loves it! He actually scoffs it down like there’s no tomorrow.

That’s very satisfying to see from a dog who’s usually fussy eater.

The Verdict

I found mainly pros and only a few minor cons with Pure dog food.

The good

Natural, quality ingredients
Norman dog loves it.
No upset tummy side-effects from Norman, meaning no anti-social whiffy dog bottom smells in the tent at night. (Bonus.)
Convenient to take camping due to it’s dry weight

The not so good

The dry food didn’t swell up as much as I was expecting after adding the warm water and waiting the full 15 minutes.
May not be convenient every meal to have to wait 10-15 minutes to re-hydrate your dogs food before you feed him.

Regarding the food not plumping up once re-hydrated as much as I expected, what I have ended up doing to get the most from the Pure food, (and make it last longer) is to mix 2-3 scoops of powder with 4-5 scoops of water, and add in a cup of the good quality biscuits Norman usually has. This formula works well for Norman and myself.

Due to the price, Pure wont be Normans every day food, we will be feeding him on his usual high quality diet which is a mix between raw, and high percentage wet meat mixed with biscuits mostly. However, because he loves it so much, we will defiantly be buying Pure again and feeding Norman it at least twice a week, and taking it with us on our future camping and boating trips.