Happy Dog Vet Diet: Adipositas review

Ingredients, as declared: Poultry protein* (28 %), maize, lignocellulose, potato flakes, fish meal, potato protein*, carrots* (2.5 %), poultry fat, hydrolysed liver, sunflower oil, potassium chloride, canola oil, dried whole egg, yeasts*, sodium chloride, mussel meat* (0.2 %), hydrolysed collagen (0.2 %), glucosamine (0.2 %), seaweed*, linseed (0.16 %), chicory powder (0.04 %), milk thistle, yeasts* (extract), artichoke, dandelion, ginger (0.016 %), birch leaves, stinging nettle, camomile, coriander, rosemary (0.008 %), sage, liquorice root, thyme (total dried products from the processing of herbs: 0.16 %); *) dried; ) dried, partially hydrolysed

Six of the seven follow one house pattern. A cereal or potato base sits at the front, poultry fat is the added fat, dried carrots, potassium chloride and sodium chloride cover the mineral side, and a fine tail of botanicals closes it. Urinary Low Purine sits apart from that pattern entirely, which the notes on that variety cover.

Hydrolysed liver is the ingredient every one of the seven shares. It is liver broken down into a coating rather than fed as an organ meat, and its job is keeping a therapeutic kibble worth eating for a dog whose appetite has gone quiet. On diets a dog has to stay on for months, that is not a small consideration.

Four of them carry the same long herb list, milk thistle, artichoke, dandelion, ginger, birch leaves, stinging nettle, camomile, coriander, rosemary, sage, liquorice root and thyme, declared together as 0.16% of dried herb products. Individual entries within it are printed as low as 0.008%. These are seasoning quantities.

Species naming varies a lot from one variety to the next. Some print chicken or salmon by name, others use poultry protein or meat meal, which leaves the animal open. If your dog is avoiding a particular bird or a particular red meat, the variety you are handed matters far more than the range as a whole does.

None of the seven declares its moisture, and the bags print no calorie figure, so the dry matter columns and the energy numbers here are both estimates. The added vitamin and trace element panels, by contrast, are itemised variety by variety. Vitamins A, D3, E and the B group sit beside iron, copper, zinc, manganese, iodine and selenium, and several varieties add L-carnitine or taurine on top.

Nothing here tells you which of the seven your dog needs. That is named at the consultation, and the vet who named the condition is the one who names the food.

Adipositas is the fibrous one. Poultry protein leads at 28% with lignocellulose immediately behind it, pushing crude fibre to 13.5% as declared and 14.7% of dry matter. Fat comes down to 10.3% of dry matter and energy to 297.8 kcal per 100g, the lowest in this line. Bulking a diet with indigestible fibre is meant to do exactly that. The poultry has fish meal beside it in this recipe, so chicken is not the only animal here.

Carrots are declared at 2.5%, with mussel meat, hydrolysed collagen and glucosamine at 0.2% each, and L-carnitine is dosed at 500 mg per kilo. Calcium reads 1.41% of dry matter. The label's guide runs from 40 grams a day for a 2kg dog to 645 grams at 80kg.

The line comes in 1kg, 4kg, 12kg and 12.5kg bags depending on the variety, and four of them are also sold as multipacks. Per kilo the varieties run from £5.23 to £8.07. On an energy based estimate for a 15kg dog, that lands somewhere between about £1.15 and £2.07 a day across the range, with the vet's dosing instruction coming first.