Dry Food is a popular choice for the convenience of pets, but many pet owners opt to do canned food instead. Chihuahuas can be picky eaters, and canned food is often more appetizing for them, encouraging them to eat.

Canned food also has other benefits. It can be easier on the kidneys because it offers your pet more hydration, and it can make your dog feel fuller. If your dog is on the plump side, offering them a correctly sized portion of canned food instead of dry food can stop them pestering you for more, even as you offer them fewer calories.

One final benefit of canned food is that for dogs who have few or no teeth, it is much easier to feed them. Since it is soft and squishy, dogs don’t need teeth to get their meal down.

If you plan to offer your pest canned food, these are the 10 best canned dog foods for chihuahuas in 2023. If you don’t see your food here, don’t fret. There are many brands of Dog Food out there, and we only included canned dog food that all our chihuahuas would eat (4x picky eater approval) and that I liked the ingredients of. This is hard to do.

We’re listing these brands as our own opinions, and although if you click on one of our links we will receive a commission, none of these companies enlisted us to showcase their products. We value our opinion being our own opinion.

Lotus

This is the brand we were using right before we switched to making our own dog food. All four dogs loved the food, and we love the owner of the company. We have personally met the owner of this company and have full confidence that this is probably the best canned dog food out there.

The owner genuinely cares about dogs and quality dog foods. He only uses the best ingredients for your dog—ingredients you would recognize, not “feed grade” versions of them.

All four dogs love every single flavor of this food, which is in itself a miracle. Lotus is available on both Chewy and Amazon in 12 pack cases.

Ziwi Peak

My dogs love the semi-moist Ziwi Peak bags so much that despite being a ‘dog food’ I use each little square as training treats. Ziwi Peak is far too expensive for me as a dog food, but as a training treat getting thousands of little squares for $20-$30 is worth the price.

Their canned food is just as delicious as their dried stuff, per my dogs, so we like to have this on hand for when dogs are feeling under the weather or otherwise unwilling to eat. At $7.70 a can though, this is definitely not a daily feeder for us. (Sorry Ziwi Peak! We love you!)

Ziwi Peak was recently purchased by a Chinese-based company in 2022. They did change the recipes shortly afterwards, as many companies do. It appears that the changes that were made were improvements rather than cost-saving measures. They boosted organ content, needed for certain vitamins, and superfoods. Many brands are notorious for claiming a superfood in a food–and then having less of that ingredient than the salt used to season it.

These changes are beneficial to the food and we’re pleased to continue using the product. Ziwi Peak is available in multiple flavors on both Chewy and Amazon.

Weruva

If your dog is super picky about texture, Weruva is a fantastic choice. The chicken for example, looks exactly like shredded chicken mixed with gravy. The price also isn’t quite so heart attack inducing, at about $4.42 a can.

This is once again a solid choice for really picky eaters that have texture issues. Our dogs once again gobbled it all up, despite all having their unique pickiness issues to deal with.

We also like the ingredients, with the featured ingredients being mainly animal protein (named source) a finely cut vegetable, and the vitamins and minerals needed to make it complete. Wruva is available on both Chewy and Amazon.

Instinct Original Grain-Free

When I first got Leia, Instinct was one of the first brands she could eat without violently puking her guts up. She had a very sensitive stomach we later found out was due to acid reflux, and we tried many, many different brands of dog food before we found one that suited her tummy.

Instinct canned food is 95% meat, with the rest being there for balance. My dogs are normally anti-loaf, which this canned dog food is, but they’ll eat this canned dog food with gusto.

Not trying to harp on price too much but at $3.69 per can, this is one of the more affordable options on the list despite being of the highest quality. This is available on Amazon and Chewy.

Orijen

Orijen canned food is very hard to get your hands on. It pops up randomly in pet stores around my area, and you can sometimes find it on Chewy or Amazon. When you can get your hands on it, it’s a great dog food that will delight your pets, and has very high quality ingredients in it.

Before purchasing this, you should check the ingredients closely in case they have changed. This used to be a small business focused on quality, but it was recently purchased by Mars, Inc and may have ingredients swapped or downgraded.

It’s also possible it will stay the same, but we are very sketchy about transitions with food companies. Orijen is available in several different flavors on Chewy and Amazon.

Merrick Lil’ Plates Dinner Duos

My dogs actually love almost everything in the Merrick’s brand. These are notable because their small size means not having to save them in the refrigerator. The ingredients are high quality, and our picky eaters do seem to love them.

We suggest feeding this with caution though, as while our dogs do love every single one, as one of our pets sometimes gets diarrhea if she gets more than her fair share. (Everyone eats privately in their own room, but if one of them manages to eat part of someone else’s portion, they regret it later.)

We don’t feed these often as they are too small to be practical for four dogs, but if you just need a small amount of food to hide medication in or get a picky dog eating, this is a great option. You can get it on Amazon or Chewy here.

Taste of the Wild

At $2.99 a can, this is the best price without compromising quality on this list. Taste of the Wild is one of my dog’s favorite canned foods, and still features everything we look for as far as ingredients. We like the fact that the food has only named sources in their meat, and that it is grain-free.

Our dogs all like the flavor of most of their canned foods, although the Salmon flavor was universally panned for some reason. (Not fish fans? Who knows.)

Luckily, there are so many flavors our dogs are able to eat the non-fishy ones without rejecting it, and at that price, we can afford to experiment with flavors. You can find Taste of the Wild, like everything else so far, on Amazon and Chewy.

Stella and Chewy’s

Stella and Chewy’s is a high-quality brand my dogs love. Their favorite is actually the freeze dried dog food, but the canned food is also a well-received choice. There’s a pack of 3 with 3 different flavors you can try for just $6.99 right now. (Please note, that price was on 5/3/2023 and if you see this later the price may change. Not sure if this is a sale or not.)

Stella and Chewy’s is another brand that features high quality ingredients, with protein featuring high on the list. We trust this brand, and our dogs love the flavors. These also have ‘lil bites’ packages similar to the Merrick’s that let you have super small portions for your tiny dog. Available on Amazon and Chewy.

The Honest Kitchen

We learned about The Honest Kitchen through their dry mixes that let you make moist food at home. Our dogs were not terribly enthusiastic about the mixes, but they did love the canned food. Their food is made without by-products, feed-grade ingredients, or GMOs.

Not only is it made with human-grade ingredients, it’s also made in a human-grade facility. That’s a fantastic level of quality for a dog. Available on Amazon and Chewy.

Tiki Dog

Tiki Dog is our only grain inclusive canned food on this list. I’m very cautious about grains in dog food because of the quality of feed grade grain. While we have no problems with dogs eating grains, we’ve got a big problem with aflatoxins and grain weevils.

We tried this one briefly when one of our dogs were going through an extremely picky phase, and it worked out well for her. This one is toward the bottom of our list because although it is a very tasty food that our dogs love, and has no listed ingredients that look bad, they don’t guarantee those grains are not feed-grade. This is also why it’s on the end of our list. Available on Amazon and Chewy.

We’ll talk about what our red-flag ingredients are and why in a later article, but for now, we just wanted to let people know about the brands we trust with our own dogs. All of these foods have been fed to our dogs at one point or another, and withstood the picky dog challenge.

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