Canine Choice Senior Light: Small Breed Lamb (7kg) review

This food sits comfortably in our Good band, level with the typical adult dry food, and its transparency reads Outstanding. The margin comes from a well-declared recipe and a genuinely purposeful additive deck rather than from meat density, which is deliberately restrained in a weight-control food.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh lamb (35%), sweet potato (17.5%), pea protein, dehydrated lamb (7%), peas (7%), apple pulp (7%), dehydrated carrot (0.45% equivalent to 4% carrots), hydrolyzed lamb liver (3%), dehydrated cranberry (0.08% equivalent to 0.75% cranberries), chicken fat, brewer's yeast, fish oil, minerals, chicory (source of fos), mannan-oligosaccharides (mos), camomile, parsley, rosehips, sea algae, rosemary, cloves, glucosamine (350 mg/kg), cartilage (a source of chondroitin 250 mg/kg), yucca schidigera.

Fresh lamb at 35% makes a generous headline, though fresh meat is mostly water and the dehydrated backup is a modest 7%. That is why pea protein appears so high on the list: it tops the protein up to 25%, or 27.2% of dry matter, without adding fat. In a light recipe that is a defensible trade, but it does mean not every gram of protein is animal.

Sweet potato at 17.5%, peas at 7% and apple pulp at 7% carry the carbohydrate, estimated at 47.0% of dry matter. There is no grain anywhere on the list.

L-carnitine at 300 mg/kg is where the weight-management thinking sits, an amino acid derivative that moves fat into the cells' furnaces. For the gut there is a Bacillus subtilis probiotic, with FOS and MOS as the prebiotics. Vitamin C at 400 mg/kg and vitamin E at 550 mg/kg give antioxidant cover.

Joint support is dosed at 350 mg/kg glucosamine and 250 mg/kg chondroitin from cartilage, a sensible inclusion for a dog whose joints feel every spare kilo.

Chicken fat and fish oil supply the essential fats, so lamb leads but is not alone in the recipe. That only matters if you are avoiding chicken or fish on purpose; for everyone else it simply keeps skin and coat fed while the rest of the dog slims.

The same recipe packed for small dogs in a 7kg bag, with the feeding table scaled right down, from 26 grams a day for a 1kg dog to 148 grams at 10kg.

The 12kg and 1.5kg bags work out at £5.42 a kilo, and the small breed 7kg bag at £5.71.

As a rough guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 240 grams a day, between £1.30 and £1.37 depending on the edition, using the standard 840 kcal estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75). Where a dog is slimming down, set the portion from the target weight and not the current one, and agree that number with your vet.