Weight arrives on a dog gradually — a treat here, a slightly generous scoop there — and by the time it's obvious on an older dog it's also harder to shift than it would have been a few years earlier.

This is a complete dry food built around that problem rather than around it as an afterthought. Protein comes mainly from poultry meal (a minimum of 14% chicken) and chicken liver, with rice used alongside maize rather than wheat, and glucosamine, milk thistle and a run of named herbs — nettle, marigold, mint, fenugreek, thyme, rosemary among them — further down the list.

• Complete food for older, less active or overweight adult dogs
• Protein 17.0%, oil 6.5%, fibre 3.5%, ash 4.0%
• Omega 3 at 0.4%, omega 6 at 1.8%
• Free from wheat-gluten and soya
• Glucosamine included, alongside taurine and carnitine
• 12KG bag

On who this suits. This is a reduced-calorie, lower-protein recipe aimed specifically at older dogs, dogs prone to weight gain, or overweight adults — it isn't a general adult food, and a young, active dog fed this as its only food would likely be under-fuelled. Autarky's own feeding table gives separate gram ranges for weight control and for more active dogs, so it's worth weighing against the lower figure first if the goal is to shift weight rather than maintain it.

Who it's for: an older dog, or one carrying more weight than it should, where one complete food needs to manage both rather than switching between diets.