Happy Dog Mini Senior review

This one finishes level with the crowd. It lands in the Good band, and the Good band is exactly where the typical adult dry food sits, so it is mid table rather than an outlier in either direction. Protein and processing reads Good with nutritional balance and transparency both Average, which is an unusually even result.

The numbers behind that are modest by design. Protein converts to 25.5% of dry matter and fat to 12.0%, carbohydrate estimates at 53.8% against the 46.2% typical, and energy comes in at 360 kcal per 100 grams next to the 357 typical. A senior recipe is meant to read gentle, and this one reads gentle. The label declares no moisture, so the dry matter figures here work from a kibble's usual 8%.

Ingredients, as declared: Rice, maize, meat meal, barley, animal proteins* (poultry 4 %, lamb 4 %), oils and fats, fish meal (5 %, of which 50 % salmon meal), hydrolysed protein, beet pulp (desugared), apple pomace, potassium chloride, yeasts*, sodium chloride, seaweed*, linseed (0.15 %), dried whole egg (0.1 %), chicory powder, milk thistle, mussel meat* (0.02 %), yucca schidigera*, yeasts* (extract), artichoke, dandelion, ginger (0.014 %), birch leaves, stinging nettle, camomile, coriander, rosemary, sage, liquorice root, thyme (total dried herbs: 0.14 %). *dried.

Rice heads the list with maize behind it, and that order tells you the shape of the food: a cereal based kibble with meat worked through it rather than a meat based one. Rice is easily digested and undemanding, which is a fair choice for an older gut.

Meat meal comes third and is the largest animal entry, but it names no species. The declared meats, poultry at 4% and lamb at 4%, sit behind it. Meat meal itself is a perfectly respectable dry rendered protein and it is what most kibble is built on, so the question here is one of naming, not quality.

The marine part of the recipe is fish meal at 5%, half of it salmon meal, backed by linseed at 0.15%. Both bring omega 3, and the fish form is the one a dog's body puts to work most directly.

The senior recipe is marked out by chicory powder. It is a natural source of inulin, a fibre the beneficial gut bacteria feed on, and it sits alongside desugared beet pulp doing a related job. Vitamin C and L-carnitine both appear in the additive list. Part of the zinc arrives as an amino acid chelate, a form the body generally absorbs more readily.

Everything from milk thistle down to thyme totals 0.14%. Mussel meat sits at 0.02% in the same bracket, and dried whole egg at 0.1%. It is a pleasant tail, not a working one, and the recipe stands up without it.

Sold in 800g and 4kg bags, with the 4kg also offered as a twin pack.

As a portion guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate) would eat around 234 grams a day. The small dogs this is actually built for are covered by the label's own table, which runs from 45 grams a day at 2kg up to 145 grams at 10kg. Start there and let the dog settle the rest.