Until last week, we were feeding Chloe frozen raw food at home (from a Seattle company called Natural Pet Pantry — yes, Chloe rejected all of the nationally-available brands) and a motley assortment of foods on the road, including Taste of the Wild and Now! kibble, and Stella & Chewy’s freeze-dried raw food. I’ve been wavering in my allegiance to frozen raw food since my brother, an infectious disease specialist, asked over Easter break how confident I was that I wasn’t putting Chloe in a position to contract toxoplasmosis. Not that confident, it turns out, but I still hankered for the benefits of a raw diet.

Enter ZiwiPeak’s air-dried raw food — or, rather, re-enter, because I tried it out on Chloe as a puppy and she rejected it then as vigorously as she rejected every other food we offered her. For the past week, however, she’s been wolfing it down, and I’m convinced enough that it’s a keeper that I’ve invested in a couple of the big bags of venison and lamb. I’m pleased, too, because this food will travel well, so I don’t have to switch diets on her just when she’s dealing with the stress of travel and jet lag. One last thing to celebrate: Portion sizes for ZiwiPeak air-dried food are very small (just 2 oz. a day for a dog Chloe’s size), so this food doesn’t take up a lot of packing space either.

Please note that the Stella & Chewy’s freeze-dried raw food I mentioned also packs easily and is a quality product, but Chloe doesn’t consistently love it, and rehydrating it takes more time than she’s willing to wait.