Most people pick a dry food by the animal on the front of the bag and read the ingredient list only once something has gone wrong. That order works perfectly well for years and then stops working overnight, usually the week a dog starts scratching or bringing meals back up — and at that point the second ingredient matters as much as the first one, sometimes more.

So it is worth saying plainly what is in this one. Fresh salmon leads the composition at 26% and rice comes in at 19%, but dried chicken sits between them as the second ingredient, with chicken oil and fish digest further down alongside maize, beet pulp, yeast, whole dried egg at 1%, whole linseed at 0.5% and dried krill. Arden Grange add prebiotic FOS at 900mg/kg and MOS at 400mg/kg, dried cranberries at 100mg/kg, plus glucosamine, MSM and chondroitin sulphate. The analysis is crude protein 25%, crude fat 15%, crude ash 7% and crude fibre 2.5%, with omega-3 at 0.85% and omega-6 at 3.1%.

• 6KG bag, complete food for adult dogs
• Fresh salmon 26%, rice 19%, with dried chicken as the second ingredient
• Crude protein 25%, crude fat 15%, crude ash 7%, crude fibre 2.5%
• Omega-3 0.85%, omega-6 3.1%
• Prebiotic FOS 900mg/kg and MOS 400mg/kg
• No added wheat, gluten, soy or dairy

The bag says salmon; the list says chicken as well. Dried chicken is the second ingredient in this food and chicken oil is in it too, which means it is not a fish-only recipe and it is no use whatsoever to anyone who moved to salmon specifically to get chicken out of the diet — which is among the likeliest reasons a bag like this leaves the shelf. Read the exclusions carefully too: Arden Grange say no added wheat, gluten, soy or dairy, and maize and rice are both present, so this is not a grain-free food and does not claim to be.

Who it's for: adult dogs doing well on a mixed-protein diet whose owners want the omega figures stated rather than implied, and households wanting a fish-led food without needing it to be single-protein.