On the real maths of daily nutrition and where supplementation fits in.

 

The conversation about what dogs eat has shifted considerably in the last decade. Raw feeding, cold-pressed kibble, home-cooked meals, freeze-dried proteins. There is more choice than ever and more opinion to go with it. What has not changed is the underlying question every owner is trying to answer: am I actually giving my dog what they need?

The honest answer for most dogs eating commercial food, even high-quality commercial food, is probably. Modern complete diets are formulated to meet minimum nutritional standards and most do. The difficulty is that minimum standards and optimal nutrition are not the same thing and the gap between them tends to show up slowly rather than dramatically.

Omega-3 is consistently under-represented in dry kibble because it degrades with heat and processing. B vitamins are often present but at levels that vary depending on the quality of the raw ingredients. Probiotics are almost never present in commercially processed food in any meaningful concentration because the bacteria do not survive the manufacturing process. Glucosamine and collagen appear in some diets but at doses that are rarely therapeutic.

This is not a criticism of commercial food. It is simply an acknowledgment of what processing does to nutrients and why a daily supplement makes practical sense even for dogs on a good diet.

The maths of supplementation is usually more accessible than people expect. Rusko's Multivitamin works out at roughly 27 pence per chew at the standard price. A small dog on one chew a day is covered for 120 days from a single tub. A large dog on four chews a day goes through a tub in a month but is getting a meaningfully higher daily dose of Glucosamine, Salmon Oil, MSM, Collagen and Probiotics as a result. At £32.99 a tub that is comfortably under a pound a day for comprehensive nutritional support.

Compare that to a single vet visit prompted by a preventable issue and the case makes itself.

Feeding a dog well is not about spending the most. It is about spending thoughtfully on the things that actually contribute to health over time. A complete commercial diet and a clean daily supplement is a combination that most dogs will do very well on. The rest is largely noise.