Sneyd's Wonderdog Wonderdog Original review

Our scoring reads this in the Poor band, driven almost entirely by what the label withholds. Every one of those is a category: cereals, vegetable protein extracts, oils and fats, derivatives of vegetable origin. A food that cannot be pinned down ingredient by ingredient will not score well, and protein and processing reads Poor with transparency stopping at Average. The analysis tells a friendlier story. Protein converts to 26.4% of dry matter, fat to 13.2% and carbohydrate to an estimated 44.5%, which sits under the 46.2% that is usual for adult dry food, calculated from a declared 9% moisture. Our Good band is where an ordinary adult dry food lands. Plenty of dogs have had long and busy lives on this one.

Ingredients, as declared: Cereals, Meat and Animal Derivatives (Beef, Chicken, Lamb & Pork), Derivatives of Vegetable Origin, Oils and Fats (0.25% fish oil), Various Sugars, Vegetable Protein Extracts, Minerals, (PNP Herb Blend (Seaweed Coarse, Ground Micronized Maize, Carrot Powder, Thyme, Fennel, Peppermint Powder, Limestone Granules, Glucosamine HCL, Carob Powder 5, Biopets Yucca Powder, Turmeric Powder, Dandelion Root Power Organic, Ginger Powder, Aniseed Fenugreek Extra, Oregano Herb, Chondroitin Sulphate Avian, Ecological Paprika)

Cereals opens the list, and that word alone takes in wheat, maize, barley, oats and rice. Some makers use broad terms to protect a recipe they would rather not have copied, others use them to cover a poorer grain, and from the outside there is no telling which. What it means in practice is that the grain in the bag can follow whatever the market offers, with no fixed specification behind it.

Meat and animal derivatives sits second, and beef, chicken, lamb and pork are spelled out in the bracket. That naming matters, because the legal definition of the term covers every fleshy part of a slaughtered land animal along with everything processed from the carcass. Knowing the four species does not tell you which cuts arrived, but it does tell you what your dog is actually eating, which is the question most owners are asking.

The last entry on the list is a herb blend, and it runs longer than the rest of the recipe put together. Seaweed, thyme, fennel, peppermint, carrot, turmeric, ginger, dandelion root, oregano and paprika are all in it, alongside glucosamine HCL and avian chondroitin sulphate for the joints and limestone granules acting as a mineral carrier. Nothing inside it is dosed individually, so treat the blend as a general lift and the joint pair especially as a small helping hand.

Two entries here will give most owners pause: various sugars and vegetable protein extracts. Sugar is there for palatability, and a vegetable protein extract is a plant fraction used to raise the protein figure, which is not the same thing as protein from meat. The additive panel also declares colourants, and there is nothing a dog gains from the colour of its dinner.

The mineral panel is the precise end of this label. Iron is at 200mg, zinc at 139mg, manganese at 81mg, copper at 32mg, iodine at 4mg and selenium at 0.2mg per kilo, with vitamins A, D and E each dosed. Oils and fats names its 0.25% fish oil. That brings a little omega 3 into the recipe, and it also means fish is present for any dog kept strictly away from it.

£2.13 a kilo, sold in 2.5kg and 15kg bags, with a sample pack available.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes out at around 256 grams a day, working from about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That puts the rate at £0.55 a day. For a dog of 11kg to 20kg the bag suggests 175 to 240 grams, so start there and let your dog's shape do the fine tuning.