Royal Canin X-Small Adult 8+ review

Our banding calls this Average, while the typical adult dry food comes out a step higher, in Good. Nothing in the analysis holds it back: protein at 26.1% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate at 46.4% against a 46.2% typical are ordinary rather than poor. The mark is really about the list, where rice and five further cereal entries follow the leading meat and not one animal ingredient is tied to a species. Read as an everyday food for a small senior dog, it is doing the job it was drawn up to do.

Ingredients, as declared: Dehydrated poultry proteins, rice, wheat flour, wheat, animal fats, maize flour, maize gluten, wheat gluten, hydrolysed animal proteins, chicory pulp, minerals (including pentasodium triphosphate (0.35%)), psyllium husks and seeds, soya oil, yeasts products, fish oil, fructo-oligosaccharides, algal oil Schizochytrium sp. (source of EPA and DHA).

Dehydrated poultry proteins open the list, which is the right order when older dogs are the ones eating. The water has already been driven out of that meat, so its position is close to the share it holds in the finished kibble. Protein comes in at 24.0%, which is 26.1% of dry matter on the label's declared 8.0% moisture, with fat at 18.0%, or 19.6% of dry matter.

Then comes the cereal. Inside the first ten entries there is rice, with wheat appearing as flour, as grain and as gluten, and maize as both flour and gluten. The two glutens are protein boosters of plant origin, so the figure on the pack is not purely an animal number. Estimated carbohydrate is 42.7% as fed, or 46.4% of dry matter, sitting almost exactly on the 46.2% typical for adult dry food.

The oils are the clever part. Fish oil covers the usual marine omega 3s. Algal oil from Schizochytrium delivers EPA and DHA straight from the algae that fish get theirs from in the first place, a neat way of topping up an older dog.

Fibre is handled by psyllium husks and chicory pulp, one bulking and one prebiotic, with crude fibre declared at just 1.7%. Vitamin C at 400 mg per kilo and vitamin D3 at 900 IU are the notable dosed additions. Pentasodium triphosphate at 0.35% handles the teeth, going after the mineral in saliva that turns soft plaque hard.

The naming is the honest weakness. Poultry describes a category and so do animal fats and hydrolysed animal proteins. Yeasts products is about as broad as a term gets. For a settled small dog none of that is a problem. For one whose diet is being unpicked ingredient by ingredient, it is the thing to know before you start.

£8.13 a kilo, in a 1.5kg bag.

The reference dog we apply to every food is a 15kg adult in moderate condition needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Here that comes to 217 grams a day at £1.77. Almost no dog eating this food is anywhere near that size. At low activity the label asks 24 grams a day at 1kg and 67 grams at 4kg, so the daily figure in your house lands a long way under the reference.