Hypoallergenic Adult Wet Dog Food with Salmon is a complete wet food for adult dogs, made with salmon. Below we set out what hypoallergenic actually means, since it is a marketing word rather than a regulated one.

Key Features

• Single Novel Protein: Salmon as the only animal protein, chosen because most dogs have not eaten it before.
• No Grain: Grain-free, to keep the ingredient list short.
• Digestion: Highly digestible, for a dog with a delicate stomach.
• Skin: Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.
• Pack Size: 12x363g.

What Hypoallergenic Means, And Does Not

• Hypoallergenic is a marketing word, not a regulated one. What it means in practice here is a limited ingredient list built on a single novel protein, chosen because a pet is unlikely to have met it before and so unlikely to react to it. That is a sound idea and a reasonable thing to buy.
• It is not a diagnosis and it cannot tell you whether your pet has a food allergy. Only a properly run elimination trial can, and that has to be set up by your vet and followed strictly, with no treats, chews, flavoured medication or scraps for the whole period.
• Worth knowing: true food allergy is far less common than the internet suggests, and the usual culprits are the proteins a pet has eaten most, typically chicken, beef and dairy. Grain is near the bottom of the list, not the top.
• Most itchy pets in this region are reacting to fleas or environmental allergens rather than food. A food change is worth trying, but itching that has gone on more than a couple of weeks needs looking at properly.

On Grain-Free

• This recipe has no grain, which is there to keep the ingredient list short and the protein sources limited, not because grain is inherently bad. Grain is a perfectly good source of energy and fibre for most dogs and cats, and it is an uncommon allergen.
• You may have seen the discussion linking some grain-free dog foods to dilated cardiomyopathy. The investigation focused on foods built on high levels of peas, lentils and other pulses, no single cause was established, and the picture is still unsettled.
• The sensible reading: choose grain-free when there is a reason to, as there is here, rather than because it sounds better. If your dog is on a grain-free food long term, mention it at your next check-up.

Feeding, Storage And The Range

• How much: start from the chart on the pack by weight, then adjust to what you can feel. If you feed wet and dry together, count both halves towards the daily total rather than treating the wet as an extra.
• Changing over: move across gradually over about seven days rather than switching in one go.
• Storage and serving: refrigerate once opened, use within about two days and serve at room temperature, since cold food smells of much less. In UAE summer take it up after about twenty minutes.
• Who makes it: Hill's was founded by an American vet, Mark Morris Senior, who formulated a kidney diet for a guide dog in the 1940s. They run feeding trials on their recipes, which is why they can say clinically proven where most brands cannot.
• Science Plan is not Prescription Diet: this is the everyday range for healthy pets. Prescription Diet is the separate therapeutic range for diagnosed conditions, sold on a vet's recommendation, and the two are not interchangeable.

Good To Know

• This listing is the 12x363g pack.
• Complete wet food. Can be fed alone or alongside a dry food from the same range.
• Refrigerate once opened, use within about two days and serve at room temperature.
• Keep fresh water available at all times.
• Science Plan is a non-prescription everyday food, not a veterinary therapeutic diet.
• Made by Hill's Pet Nutrition, part of Colgate-Palmolive.