🐶 What Quality Dog Owners Know. Do You?
We're about to give you some numbers.
Serious numbers.
Part of the actual secret to a genuinely healthy life for your dog. 🔑
Overfed, mismanaged, ignored, and these exact numbers are a huge part of why dogs, collectively, are so unwell right now.
All you have to do is care enough to read. 🐾
Everything in this post is sourced. Every single claim. Scroll to the bottom and you'll find exactly where each one comes from, the NRC, the BVA, the BSAVA, published veterinary reports. This isn't marketing. It's fact and science, and we want you checking it, not just trusting us. 📚
There's a piece of information the genuinely healthy dogs' owners have, and almost nobody else does.
It isn't a supplement.
It isn't a brand.
It isn't an opinion.
It isn't some stupid rating site.
It isn't what the pet shop said.
It's a number, driven by actual facts, driven by science, and it drives your dog's health, entirely subject to your knowledge and your actions.
Actually, it's 49 numbers.
Well, 12 that really matter. 12 that you must be aware of!
These are the fat soluble ones, the ones your dog genuinely needs, exactly like all 49.
But the vast majority of owners feed them with their eyes completely shut, and that's exactly what causes the internal damage behind so many everyday symptoms.
Loose stools. Poor appetite. Grass eating. Poo eating. Excessive scratching. Skin rashes. Runny eyes. Eating moss. Eating bark. Random spots on the skin. Bad breath. A poorly stomach. To name but a tiny few...
Here they are, straight away. 👇
Vitamin A 🅰️: Low 1010 IU, Target 1667 IU, High 53,333 IU
Vitamin D ☀️: Low 125 IU, Target 500 IU, High 2200 IU
Vitamin E 🛡️: Low 12 IU, Target 56 IU, High 800 IU
Vitamin K 🩸: Low 0.7 mg, Target 0.97 mg, High 1.067 mg
Calcium 🦴: Low 0.5 g, Target 3.5 g, High 6.25 g
Phosphorus 🦴: Low 1 g, Target 1.7 g, High 4 g
Iron 🩸: Low 7.5 mg, Target 15 mg, High 30 mg
Zinc ✨: Low 12 mg, Target 15 mg, High 30 mg
Copper 🔶: Low 1 mg, Target 1.5 mg, High 3 mg
Manganese 🧠: Low 0.8 mg, Target 1.2 mg, High 4 mg
Selenium ⚠️: Low 0.2 mg, Target 0.3 mg, High 2 mg
Iodine 🦋: Low 0.22 mg, Target 0.32 mg, High 1.4 mg
Worryingly, your dogs actual health is dictated to how you read, interpreted and understood the last bit. Most will have got bored and their mind already to find something else to be distracted with. Too much thinking here. God you have to feel so sorry for their dogs don't you. They drew the short straw at the collection process!
Those are the actual NRC ranges, per 1000 kcal, for an adult dog. Low, Target, High.
Quick explanation of IU, since it's sitting right there in that list and nobody ever actually defines it. IU stands for International Unit.
It isn't a weight, it's a measure of biological strength, how much actual effect a given amount has in the body. It exists because a milligram of one form of a vitamin doesn't always do the same job as a milligram of another form, so IU standardises the comparison.
That's why vitamin A and D get measured in IU, but calcium and iron get measured in plain milligrams. See...it isn't that difficult is it!?!
Most owners know the "Low" bit exists, deficiency, everyone half understands that one. Almost nobody knows about the "High" one. And going over it is what the vast majority of owners are actually doing, constantly, without the faintest idea, starting the very toxicity that's well documented in the dog they claim to love. 😬
Here's why that number matters so much. And here's how to actually use it.
The 49 Numbers Nobody Mentions 🔢
Your dog needs 49 separate nutrients to function properly.
Not a rough idea of them.
Not "some protein, some veg." Forty nine specific, individually measurable things.
Every single one of those 49 has a floor and a ceiling. Go under the floor, deficiency. Go over the ceiling, and here's what almost nobody tells you, you create internal chaos.
Remember this bit, it's the whole post in one sentence. Dogs don't digest ingredients, they digest nutrients, and every one of those nutrients is governed entirely by numbers.
That isn't some strange concept either, it's exactly how your own body already gets managed, every time you see a doctor...
Your GP doesn't guess your blood pressure, they want it sitting close to 120 over 80.
A pulse oximeter on your finger doesn't guess your oxygen saturation, they want it sitting between 95 and 100 percent, and alarms start going off the moment it drops below that.
Your BMI sits inside a defined band too, under 18.5 is flagged, over 25 is flagged, 18.5 to 24.9 is where you want to be.
Your dentist doesn't guess at gum health, they measure pocket depth in millimetres.
Anyone on blood thinning medication gets their INR checked regularly, aiming for a number precisely between 2 and 3, not roughly, precisely.
Cholesterol has defined targets, total under 5, LDL down, HDL up.
Your thyroid has a reference range too, drift outside it and you're prescribed medication to pull it back in.
Blood glucose has a range.
Resting heart rate has a range, 60 to 100 beats a minute. Even body temperature sits inside a range, 36.1 to 37.2 degrees.
A newborn baby gets weighed against a growth chart within hours of arriving, for exactly this reason.
Every measure of human health you've ever had checked lives inside a range.
Not a guess. A range. 🩺
Your dog's health runs on the exact same principle. Just 49 ranges instead of one. Health was never mysterious. It's numbers, kept inside where they belong. 💛
Just be grateful your Doctor or Dentist or even Surgeon don't have that glazing over eyes feeling when they have to do something, and if that happens to you, then look at your dog, look deep into its eyes and say "Sorry", Sorry that it got a lazy owner responsible for its future health. Because that's about the only conversation you could have.
But if that's not you, well, that's amazing, and its why we can be friends.
The Serious Culprits ☠️
Not all 49 carry the same risk when overfed.
Most of the water soluble vitamins, vitamin C and the B group, simply get urinated out if there's excess. Overfeeding those is rarely the problem.
The genuinely dangerous group is the one that gets stored.
Fat soluble vitamins, A, D, E and K, plus a set of minerals that behave exactly the same way, calcium, phosphorus, iron, zinc, copper, manganese, selenium and iodine. The full list you just saw above. 🔝
These don't pass through. They sit in fat, bone, liver and other organ tissue, and they build.
Worth being straight about this. There are 49 nutrients in total, and every one of them matters. This post narrows to the 12 that carry the highest risk when overfed, the ones where getting it wrong causes the most damage, the fastest.
The other 37 aren't unimportant, they're simply not the ones landing dogs in genuine trouble through overfeeding.
If you have a puppy, these numbers move, and this is where owners get caught out most badly.
A puppy's requirements climb steadily upward from birth, and keep climbing right through to around 6 months old. That's the peak, the point where nutrient needs, especially calcium and vitamin A, sit at their highest relative to body size.
From there, requirements begin easing back down, gradually, until they settle into standard adult ranges somewhere around 9 to 10 months old.
That means the exact same amount of the exact same food can be correct at 4 months, dangerously excessive at 6 months if not adjusted, and then wrong again in the opposite direction if you don't step it back down as your puppy approaches adult size.
Static feeding through a growth curve that isn't static is exactly how calcium and vitamin A overload happens in growing dogs, and it happens quietly, one well meaning bowl at a time.
What Happens When You Get It Wrong, According to the People Whose Job It Is to Know 🩺
This isn't our opinion. This is what the actual governing bodies say.
The NRC, the National Research Council, ran this research specifically so serious, intelligent dog owners would have the numbers to act on. Not to file away. Not to ignore. To use.
Their 2006 report on canine nutrition sets Safe Upper Limits precisely because they identified real, documented harm above those points, this wasn't guesswork, it was built from published, peer reviewed data.
The BVA, the British Veterinary Association, has been direct about the consequence of owners not understanding what they're feeding. Their own survey found over 60% of UK vets now list feeding related issues as the single biggest welfare concern in daily practice.
The BSAVA, the British Small Animal Veterinary Association, states plainly that getting feeding wrong causes measurable functional impairment, respiratory, cardiovascular and renal systems specifically named. Not cosmetic. Functional.
Your dog can't tell you when a number is climbing. He can't say "my calcium's too high this week." What he can do is show you red flags, a duller coat, a stiffer walk some mornings, ears that flare up again, skin that won't settle. Small signs, easy to miss, easy to explain away as "just his age" or "just how he is."
It's still suffering. Quiet, easy to miss, entirely avoidable suffering.
That's not dramatic language for effect. That's genuinely what the NRC's own toxicity data describes when these ceilings are breached, discomfort, organ strain, and in the more severe documented cases, lasting damage.
What Each One Actually Does, and What Overfeeding It Actually Costs 📋
Vitamin A 🅰️ (Low 1010 IU, Target 1667 IU, High 53,333 IU) supports vision, skin repair and immune function.
Overfed, it accumulates in the liver and has been linked to bone and joint pain severe enough to affect mobility.
Vitamin D ☀️ (Low 125 IU, Target 500 IU, High 2200 IU) controls calcium absorption.
Overfed, it drives calcium too high, which damages the kidneys and has been documented causing abdominal pain, vomiting and lethargy in veterinary toxicity reports.
Vitamin E 🛡️ (Low 12 IU, Target 56 IU, High 800 IU) protects cells from damage.
Overfed, it's one of the more forgiving of the group, but it can still interfere with blood clotting at high, sustained levels.
Vitamin K 🩸 (Low 0.7 mg, Target 0.97 mg, High 1.067 mg) supports normal blood clotting.
Genuinely rare to overfeed through food alone, the real risk here is usually deficiency, not excess.
Calcium 🦴 (Low 0.5 g, Target 3.5 g, High 6.25 g) builds bone and supports muscle function.
Overfed, especially in a growing puppy, it's directly linked to abnormal skeletal development.
Phosphorus 🦴 (Low 1 g, Target 1.7 g, High 4 g) works alongside calcium for bone strength.
Overfed, it places direct extra strain on the kidneys, the organ already working hardest to clear excess.
Iron 🩸 (Low 7.5 mg, Target 15 mg, High 30 mg) carries oxygen in the blood.
Overfed, it becomes toxic to the gut lining and liver.
Zinc ✨ (Low 12 mg, Target 15 mg, High 30 mg) supports skin integrity and immune response.
Overfed, it actively interferes with copper absorption, creating a second deficiency on top of the original excess.
Copper 🔶 (Low 1 mg, Target 1.5 mg, High 3 mg) supports connective tissue and iron metabolism.
Overfed, it accumulates in the liver and has been linked to chronic liver damage in predisposed dogs.
Manganese 🧠 (Low 0.8 mg, Target 1.2 mg, High 4 mg) supports bone and cartilage formation.
Overfed, it's been associated with neurological effects in other species, and caution is advised in dogs for the same reason.
Selenium ⚠️ (Low 0.2 mg, Target 0.3 mg, High 2 mg) protects cells and supports thyroid function.
Overfed, it has the narrowest safety margin of the entire group, only around five times the target amount separates healthy from harmful.
Iodine 🦋 (Low 0.22 mg, Target 0.32 mg, High 1.4 mg) drives thyroid hormone production.
Overfed, it disrupts the thyroid in the opposite direction to deficiency, still dysfunction, just from the other side.
How This Actually Happens on an Ordinary Tuesday 📅
Nobody sets out to overfeed a dangerous nutrient. It happens through completely ordinary, well meaning choices, stacked on top of each other without anyone doing the maths.
Breakfast is a complete, properly balanced base food, sitting right on target for every nutrient. Fine so far.
Mid morning, a couple of chicken feet, because they're natural, because the packet says good for joints. That's calcium and phosphorus added on top of an already balanced base.
Afternoon walk, a handful of liver treats for training, because they work brilliantly and your dog adores them. That's vitamin A added on top of calcium and phosphorus already added on top of a balanced base.
Evening, a fish oil capsule, because a friend said it's good for the coat. That's vitamin D and vitamin A again, on top of everything else already sitting there.
Not one single decision in that entire day was reckless. Every one was made with love, and mostly with good information about that one product in isolation. Nobody added it up. Nobody was supposed to know to. That's the whole problem in one ordinary Tuesday.
The Bit Almost Nobody Wants to Hear ⚖️
If you don't know your dog's weight, on a weekly basis, you don't actually know what you're feeding. Not really. You're guessing.
Most people can't be bothered to weigh their dog every week. We genuinely understand that, life is busy, a lead and a walk feels like enough.
But it's still cruel. Not through malice, through absence of information. A dog fed against last month's weight, or a guess, or "the same as always," drifts steadily further from these ranges without anyone noticing, in either direction.
Invest in a proper set of weighing scales. Not the bathroom ones, holding him and subtracting your own weight, but that is still better than none, an actual pet or kitchen scale that gives you a genuinely accurate weekly reading has to be your plan for the future.
It costs less than one vet visit, and it pays for itself many times over. Every single number in this post depends on that one accurate weekly figure, get the weight wrong and every nutrient calculation built on top of it is wrong too. It also catches problems early, weight creeping up or down weeks before it's ever visible to the eye.
Thirty to sixty seconds a week, and it's the one habit that turns guesswork into genuine control. ⚖️
(This is exactly where a nutritionist earns their keep, someone who can actually give you real numbers, grounded in NRC guidance, tracked against your dog's actual current weight rather than a memory of what he weighed at some point.)
(In practice that means starting from a base food that already delivers all 49 nutrients in the correct ranges, then genuinely understanding what every treat and extra adds on top of that foundation, against your dog's real, current, weekly weight.)
We hear from somewhere between 120 and 135 people a day describing exactly this kind of pattern. Roughly half mention symptoms that trace straight back to this same issue, nutrient ranges nobody was tracking.
There's a simple, easy to read PDF on nutrition here. Click here
This is exactly why we built our nutrient tracking system the way we did. Dogs don't digest ingredients, they digest nutrients, and once that distinction actually lands, these 49 numbers stop being overwhelming and start being something you can genuinely manage.
Please comment if you have enjoyed this blog, especially if you read it weeks or months ago and are already seeing changes in your dog, which you should. Or contact us through the contact us form. We get 120 to 135 plus of these enquiries a day, and we are confident this works simply because there are far too many dogs getting fixed to explain away.
If this helped you, please share it with a fellow dog owner who needs to read it 🐶 And if your dog is going through something similar, tell us about them in the comments below. Describe what is happening, we read every single one and we genuinely love hearing about your dogs. The more you share the more we can help 🐶
If you recognise your dog in what we have described and you are ready for a proven solution rather than another guess, this is where to go next 🐶
Beyond that link you will find more than just dog food. Our food provides the 49 nutrients your dog needs, all in the right ranges.
There is also a free one to one nutritional page, which helps you track weight, hugely important, using guidance the NRC set out in their own peer reviewed, four hundred page body of data. There is nothing else quite like it. It is what elite dog owners do.
You can also get access to a free spreadsheet, eventually. It will show you all the NRC numbers behind the food, and it lets you add in over 40+ different treats, with quantities, so you can see exactly what is safe as those numbers change.
There is nothing like it anywhere in the United Kingdom.
If you are serious about fixing this, if you want to be your own dog's personal nutritionist, click that link and watch the videos. It is a long read.
But it will improve your dog's chances of a longer, and definitely healthier, life.
Sources referenced in this post:
- National Research Council (2006), Nutrient Requirements of Dogs and Cats, National Academies Press
- British Veterinary Association, Voice of the Veterinary Profession Survey, and BVA/BVNA/BVZS/BEVA joint policy position on obesity and feeding related welfare
- British Small Animal Veterinary Association (BSAVA), Position Statement on Obesity
- FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine, "Vitamin D Toxicity in Dogs"
- Perry et al., "Reduction of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations with intravenous lipid emulsion in a dog," Canadian Veterinary Journal