Different Dog: Pawfect Picnic review

Every one of the nine recipes lands in our Outstanding band, and so does the typical fresh food, which tells you what sort of field this range is competing in. The Venison & Thyme leads it on our scoring and the Atlantic Salmon trails the rest, with the seven in between packed so closely that the ordering is academic.

Protein and processing reads Outstanding on all nine recipes, and so do nutritional balance and transparency, with value in step. That is the mark of a range getting its meat share, its plant list, its labelling and its analysis right together, with no single one carrying it. Choose on the animal and the vegetables that suit your dog, because nothing in the scoring will choose for you.

Ingredients, as declared: Human-Quality British Chicken (60%) [Fresh Chicken Thigh (33%), Fresh Chicken Gizzard (20%), Fresh Chicken Liver (7%)], Broccoli (14%), Sweet Potato (8%), Red Pepper (6%), Apple (5%), Button Mushrooms (3%), Vitamins & Minerals, Scottish Salmon Oil (1.2%), Flat Leaf Parsley (0.7%), Chia Seeds (0.3%), Kelp Seaweed (0.3%), Turmeric (0.02%)

The meat share is the same size everywhere and different in shape each time. Braised Beef splits its 60% into 20% forequarter and hindquarter, 26% heart, 7% kidney and 5% liver. Chicken Casserole runs 33% thigh, 20% gizzard and 7% liver. Lamb takes 30% prime cuts, 25% heart and 5% liver, and Pork Ragu adds a 1% dried pork rind to its 30% pork, 24% heart and 5% liver. Only the Venison & Thyme keeps its 60% as one undivided entry.

Organs do a great deal of work in these recipes, and that is deliberate. Heart is a hard-working muscle and gizzard is lean, chewy poultry muscle. For vitamin B12 and vitamin A, liver has few natural equals in a dog's bowl, and the same goes for copper and selenium. Feeding a bowl with a quarter of it in heart is closer to how a dog would eat an animal than any fillet-only recipe manages.

The plant side is generous and named to the gram. A lead vegetable takes 14% or 15% on most recipes, spinach, cabbage, red cabbage, broccoli or swede depending on the dish, then a root at 8%, a fruit at 5% and button mushrooms at 3%. What follows from that is a very low starch load. Carbohydrate is estimated between 0.0% and 4.4% as fed, converting to no more than 15.7% of dry matter and to nothing measurable at all on the two chicken recipes. Typical for fresh food is 19.3%.

Water and richness both move a good deal across the range. Moisture runs from 68.0% to 76.2%, energy from 111 to 192 kcal per 100g, protein from 37.3% to 57.1% of dry matter and fat from 19.3% to 44.4%. That is a wide spread for one range and a useful one, because it means a swap between recipes is a real change of portion size rather than a change of flavour alone.

Each label finishes with a considered little package. Scottish salmon oil comes in at 1.2% for omega 3, with chia seeds and kelp seaweed at 0.3% apiece and brewer's yeast on a few of the recipes for its B vitamins. Turmeric at 0.02% is seasoning. Kelp brings iodine and a wide sweep of trace minerals, and it is used in the tiny quantities that ingredient calls for.

The added panel is dosed in print and built on chelates, the mineral form usually chosen for absorption. Vitamin A at 2500 IU, vitamin E at 50 mg, zinc at 18 mg, iron at 15 mg and manganese at 7.5 mg run through the range. Vitamin D3 at 400 IU, copper at 4.5 mg and iodine at 0.025 mg appear on most of them. The panels do vary slightly recipe to recipe, with no vitamin D3 printed on the Atlantic Salmon and no copper on the Braised Beef, so it is worth reading the one you plan to feed.

The same chicken build as the Casserole, 33% thigh, 20% gizzard and 7% liver, on a summery plant list instead: broccoli at 14%, sweet potato at 8%, red pepper at 6% and apple at 5%. It is the lightest of the two chicken pots at 124 kcal per 100g with moisture at 76.2%, so bowls run large and a hearty eater gets plenty to work through.

£15.20 a kilo on eight of the nine recipes, with the Venison & Thyme at £7.90. Pots come in 250 g, 600 g and 1000 g.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works through roughly 438 to 757 grams a day depending on the recipe. That rests on a daily energy target of about 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). On those figures a day runs from £4.58 on the Venison & Thyme up to £11.50 on the Pork Ragu. That spread follows the per-kilo figures and the energy density together, since the lighter recipes fill more of the bowl.