Happy Dog Vet Diet: Intestinal review

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken meat* (20 %), rice flour (20 %), rice (17.5 %), potato flakes, rice protein* (10 %), poultry fat (5 %), salmon meal, carrots*, hydrolysed liver, sunflower oil, cellulose, monocalcium phosphate, dried whole egg (0.5 %), maize, potassium chloride, canola oil, yeasts*, sodium chloride, seaweed*, linseed, chicory powder (0.15 % = 0.1 % inulin), yucca schidigera*, psyllium husks, yeasts* (extract, 0.05 % = 0.008 % mannan oligosaccharides), mussel meat*, milk thistle, artichoke, dandelion, ginger, birch leaves, stinging nettle, camomile (0.016 %), coriander (0.008 %), rosemary, sage, liquorice root, thyme (total dried products from the processing of herbs: 0.16 %); *) dried

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.

Intestinal puts chicken meat at the front at 20%, level with rice flour, then rice at 17.5% and rice protein at 10%, with poultry fat printed at 5%. Salmon meal, dried whole egg at 0.5% and monocalcium phosphate follow, so fish and egg are both in the recipe behind the chicken.

The fermentable fibres are spelled out with their own arithmetic on the pack: chicory powder at 0.15%, giving 0.1% inulin, and yeast extract at 0.05%, giving 0.008% mannan oligosaccharides. Psyllium husks and yucca sit beside them. Protein converts to 28.3% of dry matter and fat to 13.0%, with 347 kcal per 100g. Calcium is the highest of these seven at 1.74% of dry matter.

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.