GAIN Elite Small Dogs: Light review

Four of these recipes come out in our Good band, exactly where the typical adult dry food finishes, with the senior a step below in Average. The choice between them is still mostly a question about your dog. What holds them together is a shared build. A named dried meat sits at the top, rice, maize and oats take a large share of each bag, and maize gluten meal raises the protein figure on most of them. The mineral dosing and the printed chicory are genuine positives, protein and processing reads Average across the range, and nutritional balance does the same on all but the puppy. Transparency reads Excellent on four of the five, and the salmon recipe reaches Outstanding for the shorter, plainer list it runs. The grain load is what keeps the numbers where they are.

Ingredients, as declared: Dried Chicken & Turkey (min 26%), Rice (min 16%), Wholegrain Maize, Dehulled Oats, Maize Flour, Dried Sugar Beet Pulp, Hydrolysed Chicken Protein, Pea Fibre, Linseed, Fishmeal, Poultry Fat, Maize Gluten Meal, Salmon Oil, Sodium Chloride, Potassium Chloride, Chicory FOS (min 0.3%), TruCal Milk Mineral Complex (1,000mg/kg), Products from processing of plants.

Dried chicken and turkey open four of the five labels, at a minimum of 28% on the puppy, 26% on the light, 23% on the adult and 22% on the senior. Dried meat is the form you want high on a list. Its water is already gone, so the protein it declares reaches the finished kibble and none of it leaves in the oven. The fifth recipe swaps the pair for dried salmon at a minimum of 29%, the largest single meat declaration in the range.

Rice at a minimum of 20% leads the plant side on most of the range, with wholegrain maize and dehulled oats behind it and maize flour brought forward on the lighter recipes. Oats earn their place, digesting easily once cooked and carrying useful fibre and micronutrients. Rice suits most dogs comfortably.

Maize gluten meal appears on the four poultry recipes. It is a milling by-product used to raise the protein percentage, and it is not the same thing to a dog as protein from an animal. Nothing about it is alarming at these positions on the list, but it does mean the analysis figure is not all meat.

Hydrolysed chicken protein, or hydrolysed salmon protein at 3.5% on the fish recipe, does the palatability work. Hydrolysing breaks a protein into small fragments, which makes it taste strongly of the animal it came from and keeps an unenthusiastic small dog interested. It also means none of these recipes is clean enough to run as a strict elimination trial.

TruCal is a milk mineral complex, dosed at 1000 mg/kg on every bag, so a portion of the calcium arrives from dairy. Chicory supplies FOS, a prebiotic fibre for the gut's own bacteria, dried beet pulp adds the bulk fibre, linseed brings plant omega 3 to the poultry recipes and salmon oil rounds the fats out.

Fat down to 7.0% and fibre up to 5.0%. Pea fibre and maize flour do more of the filling, and energy sits at 311 kcal per 100g. Reach for this one when a small waistline has drifted.

Sold in 2kg, 6kg and 12kg bags for the adult and the puppy, 2kg and 6kg for the light, and 2kg, 6kg and 15kg for the senior. No bag size is given for the salmon.

As a guide, the salmon label's own table asks 126 grams a day for a 7kg dog and 165 grams for a 10kg dog. Taking the standard maintenance estimate instead, a 15kg adult in moderate condition would eat between 233 and 270 grams a day depending on the recipe, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75).