Wet or Dry Food?

A dog's food should have a lot of moisture in it. Most dogs won't drink enough water to make up for what's missing in dry food. Their natural diet (prey animals) is 70+% water. Kibble is 10% water. Just doesn't quite equate, lol.

I feed kibble, but add water (and usually mix in meat or canned food or something). My dog eats a little less than a cup per meal, and I add an equal amount of water. She's used to it, and doesn't mind at all.

If you can afford to feed all canned food, IMO that'd be better. Less carbs (which most dogs don't need) & lots of moisture. An oft-repeated myth about dry food is it cleans their teeth. In my experience, dry food dirties their teeth, and while wet food probably doesn't help clean the teeth, it doesn't add to their dirtiness like dry food does.

Both have some advantages.  If you are buying some of the grocery type brands of food, yes, you're getting more water than anything else.  Read the ingredients.  Anytime they begin with "water" or "water sufficent for processing" put the can down and go to the next.

I don't feed canned, but my dogs get homecooked for dinner, so they are getting the same benefits with fresher ingredients.  I use an excellent quality kibble for breakfast and it is left dry.  My dogs DO drink sufficient water, and it's important to always have fresh water available for dogs because it is a crucial element of their nutritional needs.

I don't think it's fair to say that EITHER is better.  Again, depending on the quality of the food, dogs might be getting MORE carbs in canned than they do in dry.  It all depends on your dog and what works best for her/him.  I do think though that it's important for dogs to get the chewing action to keep their jaws strong and healthy and they don't really need to chew wet food.  If you are going with all canned, you really need to incorporate some raw bones or something to accomadate the need to chew.  This is not just an emotional need, it's a very real physical need for the health of their jaws.

well, but dogs don't chew kibble they swallow it. My opinion is that one should never ever feed a dog a bowl of dry kibble it's incredibly unhealthy. Mix something wet into it, water if you can't get hold of anything else. Canned food can be expensive but it's easy and affordable to cook up a sloppy water-filled stew of meats and veg in a crockpot and mix that in with your kibble.

mudpuppy

 Mix something wet into it, water if you can't get hold of anything else.

But not if you're feeding Nature's Variety Prairie. 

 I only do canned if my husky needs an extra incentive to eat (not often). Or I'll use canned to stuff a kong. Otherwise I'm stictly kibble and my dogs have always been fine that way.

A couple of mine inhale, most chew, a couple even chew very deliberately.  So  guess it all depends on the dog.

I guess that we will have to agree to disagree on kibble.  While I don't agree that kibble should comprise the entire diet, I believe that it's a good "starting point" for lack of a better term.  My homecooked is not a sloppy water filled stew, but rather a carefully designed balance.  My dogs are all perfectly capable of getting their water from the water bowl, and given the number of times per day it has to be refilled, I'd say that they do.

I'm stictly kibble and my dogs have always been fine that way.

maybe it's just because I have some dogs from a very bloat-prone breed but feeding dry meals makes me nervous. Kibble is fine as a base of the diet but fresh, wet food should always be mixed in with it.

 For many years of sharing my home with dogs (after growing up not allowed to have pets), I patted myself on the back that I had almost always fed the best foods I could find (first Nutro Natural Choice, then Natura).  Then a friend introduced me to the world of raw feeding, and suddenly the dry kibble started looking kinda . . . .dry.  And unnatural (in spite of the ironic fact that I'd always used brands that were named permutations of the word natural ).

I did BARF for a while, then Volhard, then went back to kibble and raw meaty bones, but when I did that I just couldn't do the dry alone.  It was entirely a [edit:  I posted this without finishing this sentence!  Now you see how I work here - I stopped here to go walk Ted, do some training, and feed everyone a snack] subjective human reaction - I don't think the dogs cared one way or another.

I know a whole lot of very high performance dogs who do fine on dry alone and live long, healthy, very athletic lives - so I'm pretty sure dry alone is okay.  However, I do know a lot of people who put water in while traveling or during intense competition.

I don't have a problem with using a bit of warm water to soften food for a small pup or for a dog who for whatever reason needs a bit softer food.....like Tyler did for a few days when he had a tooth extracted.  I don't as a general rule, add anything to kibble, other than the occassional raw egg.  I guess for my crew, I feel that using an excellent quality kibble and feeding either homecooked or raw for dinner gives them the best of both worlds nutritionally.

My preference has always been a good canned with homemade meats or babyfood added for a boost.  I  have enough problems to worry about without having to add if she's going to get bloat or not. 

 Ari chews her kibble, then again we feed it in a toy that she has to work to get her food out of so it slows down her eating.  Now that we've found this brand of food works really well for her, I'm thinking of adding some canned to it slowly and do half and half.  If she gets fed out of her bowl, I tend to mix water in there to add moisture. 

 I give lots of raw meat and I never had any problems, my dogs have excellent health, they look great on the outside...

I use kibbles too, only because it's sometimes a bit problematic to leave my dogs in a hotel or with someone for a longer period. After they eat only real meat for a while, they start refusing dry food. So, two times a week they eat kibbles. (Royal Canine)
 

 Crusher used to chew his kibble when he still got it.  Onyx gulped and swallowed.  I believe that this is because Crusher is the big man on campus and Onyx firmly believed he could blip into her crate and steal her food if she took too long.  Now they have to chew their food because its frozen and raw and entirely too big to gulp down. 

I never fed canned anything.  And I never added water to kibble, though I do bait their water when I don't feel they are drinking enough for the work we are going to do that day.

When we fed kibble, I always moistened it.  I have a deep chested breed that is prone to bloat, so the idea of feeding him dry kibble & hoping for the best is not appealing to me.

I have used can in the past, but it isn't cost effective to feed canned food exclusively.