About Off the Leash

Choosing a dog food should be simple. It is not. The front of the bag is written to sell, the back is written to be skimmed, and comparing one food with another means squinting at two labels that do not even use the same numbers. Most owners give up and go with the packaging, and nobody could blame them.

Off the Leash does the label reading once, for every food we can find, and publishes the result as a score out of 100 with the reasoning beside it. The method is the same for a supermarket own brand and a raw specialist, and it is set out in full on how we score dog food.

Food is only half of it. A dog also needs a bed that fits, a harness that does not rub and toys that survive the first afternoon, and the same gear is sold at very different prices depending on where you look. So we do the same job for accessories: pick the ones that suit your dog’s size and habits, then compare what UK retailers charge for them, so you can buy the right thing at the best price without opening a dozen tabs.

Off the Leash is built and run by Joe, a UK dog owner who got tired of not being able to compare dog food honestly. Dogs have always been a huge part of his life: he grew up in London with two, and while living in South Africa he volunteered with a therapy dog charity. He studied biological sciences at university and is currently studying towards his Level 3 Certificate in Canine Nutrition. Off the Leash grew out of a simple frustration: dog owners deserve to know what is in the bowl without needing a degree to read the bag.

It is a small, independent operation: no brand owns a share of it, no brand sponsors it, and no brand has any say in what a food scores. The scores do not rest on anyone’s say-so, Joe’s included. Every food is judged by the same published rules, applied the same way, and the ingredient table and pillar readings behind each score are there on the review page for you to check.

The site is operated by Off the Leash Digital Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 17422303. Full company details are on the contact page.

We do not sell dog food and we do not take money from brands. When you follow a link from a review to a retailer and buy something, the retailer may pay us a commission. That commission is the same whichever food you choose, and it never touches a score, a ranking or a recommendation. The full picture is on how we earn.

We are not vets, and nothing on this site is veterinary advice. Our scores compare foods on what their labels declare. They cannot tell you whether a food is right for a dog with a health condition, and they are not a substitute for a vet who has examined your dog. Prescription and veterinary diets are reviewed but never scored, for exactly that reason.

If you think we have got something wrong, tell us. Corrections are the fastest way to make the site better, and we would rather fix a mistake than defend it. Details are on the contact page.