Imported kibble has roughly doubled, the brands on the shelf keep changing, and a fair amount of what is sold as imported is repacked.
So: what are you feeding, what does it cost you a month, and what condition is your dog in on it? Name the brand and the actual price — vague advice helps nobody buy anything.
If you cook at home, say what goes in. Home-cooked is not worse by default, but it is easy to get wrong: too much rice, not enough protein, no calcium, and cooked bones that splinter.
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Currently on a local brand at about Rs 6,500 for 20kg. Coat is fine, energy is fine, stools are fine. Not glamorous but I cannot justify tripling that.
The repacking is the real problem. I bought "imported" kibble in a printed bag that smelled like a completely different food to the previous bag of the identical product. Ask to see a sealed original sack.
Home cooked for two years. Chicken, rice, boiled egg, some veg. Dog looks great honestly.
Genuinely not trying to be rude, but does he get a calcium source? Chicken, rice and egg with no bone meal or supplement is very low in calcium and high in phosphorus, and the deficiency takes a year or two to show up and then shows up in the bones. Worth asking a vet about — it is a cheap fix, not a reason to stop cooking.
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Feeding two dogs, 31kg and 14kg, Lahore. I have kept a spreadsheet for three years because the prices kept moving and I wanted to know what I was actually doing. Numbers as of this month.
Imported premium, 15kg sack: Rs 26,000–32,000 depending on brand and who is importing that month. For my two that is about Rs 13,000/month. Coat and stools were the best they have been on anything.
Mid-tier imported / regional, 20kg: Rs 14,000–17,000. About Rs 7,500/month. Honestly, very little visible difference from the premium after the first six weeks. This is where I have settled.
Local kibble, 20kg: Rs 6,000–8,000. About Rs 3,500/month. My older dog did fine. My younger one had loose stools on two different local brands and was fine again the moment I switched back. Dogs vary and there is no way to know except by trying.
Home cooked: I costed it properly and for a 31kg dog it came to Rs 9,000–11,000/month done correctly — meaning actual meat, not just bones and rice, plus a calcium source and an oil. Everyone who tells you home cooking is cheaper is either feeding a small dog or feeding an unbalanced diet.
What I would tell someone choosing:
Read the first three ingredients, ignore the picture on the bag. If the first ingredient is a grain, you are buying grain. "Meat and animal derivatives" with no species named is a bad sign.
Judge the food on the dog after eight weeks, not eight days. Look at stool consistency, coat, energy, and whether the dog is scratching. That is more informative than any label.
And the single biggest determinant of your dog's health is not the brand, it is the quantity. A lean dog on cheap food will outlive a fat dog on premium food, comfortably. Most people here are overfeeding by 20-30% and buying expensive food to compensate for it.
On mixing: kibble plus a bit of cooked chicken and yoghurt as a topper is what both my dogs actually get. Cheaper than premium kibble, they eat it with enthusiasm, and my vet has no objection.
"A lean dog on cheap food will outlive a fat dog on premium food" — that is the whole thread in one sentence. Marking it.
Multan. Local brand, Rs 7,000 for 20kg, plus daal chawal aur bacha hua salan sham ko. Dog 7 saal ka hai, bilkul theek hai. Sab log imported ke peeche pagal hain lekin mera experience alag hai.
Salan me namak aur masala hota hai bhai, woh long term me kidney pe asar karta hai. Bacha hua khana dena hai to bina masale ka rakh lo alag se. Baaki aap theek keh rahe hain, imported ka jitna hype hai utna faida nahi.
From the rescue side, on a budget nobody here has: we feed a local kibble base with cooked chicken frames and rice bulked in, and we have fifteen to twenty dogs at a time. They are healthy. Perfect is the enemy of fed — do not let a thread full of premium brands convince someone on a tight budget that they should not have a dog.
Strongly seconding this. The number of people who rehome a dog because they read that they are feeding it "wrong" is not zero, and that is a far worse outcome than mid-tier kibble.
Practical warning about switching: do it over 7–10 days, mixing an increasing proportion. Switching in one day is how you get three days of diarrhoea and then conclude the new food "did not suit" the dog when the food was fine.
Went to the vet about the calcium thing. He said the same and put us on a supplement. Would not have known, so thank you for saying it.
Prices in Faisalabad are tracking about 5-8% below what post 5 quoted, for what it is worth. Worth checking a couple of shops rather than the first one.
