PitPat Puppy Dry review

PitPat Puppy Dry comes out in our Good band, level with a typical puppy kibble, and the striking thing is how evenly it reads. Protein and processing, nutritional balance, transparency and value all read Good. What lands it where it lands is an accumulation. Rice sits ahead of the meat, the analysis leaves moisture off, no calcium figure appears on a food offered for every size of pup, and category terms cover the fat and the hydrolysed protein. There is real thought in the recipe all the same, and the notes below give it its due.

Ingredients, as declared: Rice, poultry protein (dried) (chicken 26.0%, duck 4.0%), poultry fat, potato protein, salmon (dried) 4.0%, poultry protein (hydrolysed), beet fibre, plant fibre, carob (crushed), minerals, yeast, chicory root (ground) (natural source of inulin), psyllium husks, New Zealand green-lipped mussel meat (Perna canaliculus) (dried).

Rice opens the list, and on a kibble the leading entry carries more weight than any other. Rice is easily digested and no bad thing in a growth food, but seeing it ahead of the protein tells you where the bulk of this recipe comes from.

The poultry protein behind it is dried and broken out into chicken at 26.0% and duck at 4.0%, which is more detail than the heading on its own would give. The water is already gone from dried protein, so those shares carry through into the finished kibble much as they are printed. That is what holds the declared protein up at 30.0%.

Dried salmon at 4.0% adds a marine protein and the fats that come with it. Two other entries stay vaguer. Poultry fat and hydrolysed poultry protein name a group and never a bird. Potato protein, a plant protein, goes in to top the total up. None of that troubles a pup with no sensitivities, though it does close the door on using this food to identify one.

Fibre has clearly been thought about. Beet fibre and plant fibre give the bulk, psyllium husks add a soluble fibre that steadies things through the gut, and ground chicory root brings inulin, which feeds the useful bacteria living there. Crushed carob and yeast round the group off.

The last entry is New Zealand green lipped mussel, dried. It is the whole mussel meat, not an extract, and no dose is printed, so read it as an early nod towards joints and not a working supplement. It is still a considered thing to find in a puppy recipe.

The analysis leaves moisture out, which is the one real gap. Protein at 30.0%, fat at 17.0%, fibre at 2.3% and ash at 6.0% are all declared. Working the dry matter column from our standard assumed moisture of 8% puts protein at 32.6% and fat at 18.5%. The carbohydrate estimate lands at 39.9%, effectively level with the 39.0% a puppy kibble typically carries. Energy is declared at 394 kcal per 100g, above the typical mark.

Nowhere on the label is calcium printed, and that figure is the one to chase. A food offered from toy right through to giant is making a promise about skeletal growth in dogs whose requirements differ sharply. A large breed puppy claim needs that number, and the label does not carry it.

The added panel is the generous part. Vitamin A at 24000 IU per kilogram, D3 at 1800 IU and E at 220 mg sit over the full B group with biotin and folic acid. Then come vitamin C at 200 mg, taurine at 1000 mg and L-carnitine at 200 mg. The trace elements are given as chelates in two places, a form dogs absorb readily.

£5.88 a kilo, sold as a 4.25kg bag, singly or three at a time for 12.75kg.

What a puppy eats in a day rises steeply, then eases off as adult size comes into view. Measure against the growth chart, and never settle on one scoop early and leave it there.