Naked Dog Naked Pup: Rabbit review

Puppy raw is fierce company and the middle of it earns our Outstanding band, so simply keeping pace is a good result. All four hold that band, with the Surf & Turf a nose ahead and the other three finishing close together behind it. The Rabbit gets there on the narrowest recipe of the set: rabbit trim and rabbit with bone make up the whole animal content, with no liver, kidney or heart behind them. Protein and processing and transparency both read Outstanding on it, nutritional balance Excellent and value in step with the overall, and it remains the obvious choice for a puppy that needs an unfamiliar protein.

Ingredients, as declared: Rabbit with Bone (30%), Rabbit Trim (60%), Butternut Squash, Green Vegetables, Blueberry, Salmon Oil, Kelp, Inulin (Chicory Root)

The build follows the brand's adult thinking without watering it down for a puppy. A named animal leads and the bone comes in with the meat, with nothing mineral standing in for it. The plant fraction stays modest: butternut squash, green vegetables, blueberry. Inulin from chicory root closes each label as a prebiotic fibre, feeding the gut bacteria a young digestive system is still establishing.

Three of the four carry a genuine organ share. The Beef gives tripe at 18%, liver at 4.1% and kidney at 2.5%. The Chicken adds heart at 10% and liver at 5.1%. The Surf & Turf brings heart, lung, tripe, kidney and liver from beef alongside its fish. Organs are the densest natural source of copper and vitamin A and the B vitamins a growing dog needs. Their absence from the Rabbit is the single thing separating it from its stablemates.

The figure a puppy owner most wants is calcium, and none of these labels prints it. Each label writes bone in by name: 5% beef bones on one recipe, chicken with bone at 75% on another. The third has rabbit with bone at 30%, the fourth white fish with bone at 45%. What none of them says is how much of it lands in the bowl. Crude ash gives a rough steer: 7.4% of dry matter on the Surf & Turf, rising to 13.7% on the Beef and the Rabbit. For a small or medium breed that spread is unremarkable, and for a giant breed pup it is worth a direct question to the maker.

There is no premix, which Naked Dog states as a position rather than an omission: a naturally complete food, in their words, with no added nutrients. Kelp brings iodine. Salmon oil and hemp seed oil bring the omega 3s, liver covers the fat soluble vitamins where it appears, and the greens and blueberry add antioxidants. On recipes with this much offal it is a defensible approach, and the micronutrition is simply read off the ingredient list, with no dosed panel.

These analyses read like meat, and so they should. Protein converts to between 35.9% and 61.7% of dry matter and fat to between 25.0% and 40.7%, both comfortably high, which is what a growing dog wants. Carbohydrate is at or near zero on three of the four. The Chicken's estimate of 24.7% of dry matter is the exception, and nothing on that label could supply it, so the number is a leftover of the analysis.

Rabbit trim at 60% and rabbit with bone at 30%. The salmon oil aside, no other animal ingredient appears. The shortest label here, and the only one with no organ meat. For a puppy that needs an animal it has never eaten before, that makes it the obvious pick.

Every recipe is £5.98 a kilo. They come as 500g tubs and in boxes of 5kg, 10kg and 15kg.

Naked Dog feed this range by bodyweight, not by calories. The chart asks 125 grams a day for a 5kg puppy, 250 grams at 10kg, 375 grams at 15kg and 750 grams at 30kg, and it runs on to 50kg.