[Ellie May]

The recipe I use is for an adult dog, so it might not help you much.

I would not feed a dog food with garlic in it. There is some controversy over this but small amounts of garlic (not just large amounts) fed over a period of time have been shown to cause asthmatic attacks and even hemolytic anemia. There is no way to tell which animals this will happen to. It can be a risk to feed it in dog food, so I won't.

Feeding kibble doesn't necessarily clean teeth. There might be a few studies that indicate this but these studies, as far as I have read, did have flaws. If kibble does help clean the teeth, it is certainly not doing a good enough job to warrant feeding it. Whatever you feed, it is important to brush their teeth. So while canned food might be responsible for some tartar, kibble does not do a good job of cleaning (unless you go with a dental veterinary diet). I can tell you that Ellie ate mostly kibble for 5.5 years and ended up with stage 3-4 (worst is 4) periodontal disease...9 teeth pulled. Awhile after surgery she was started on homecooked (all soft) and also gets her teeth brushed everyday and OraVet once a week. Her teeth are great now, so the kibble didn't do a thing for her.