Nutrition
How much to feed, and where that range came from
Weigh the dog, read the pack, and you get a band — 927 to 1059 kcal for a neutered twenty-kilo adult — with the sum that produced it printed underneath. Say the dog is under a year old and it prints nothing at all. Free on every plan.
Why a range
Two dogs, the same weight, nearly double the dinner
Two dogs on the same scales, both twenty kilos. One is a neutered eight-year-old who supervises the garden from a warm patch by the back door. The other is four, entire, and holds strong views about squirrels. Tell Dogoos that much — neuter status, age, and whether the day is spent sprinting or supervising — and the first gets 662–794 kcal a day, the second 1324–1457. Feed them the same and one of them is quietly getting fat.
Individual dogs vary by up to ±50% from any feeding formula — that figure is the Merck Veterinary Manual's, and it's why Dogoos won't hand you one tidy number. You get a band, and the arithmetic that made it.
Which matters, because nobody overfeeds on purpose: vets put 46% of UK dogs at overweight or obese while 81% of owners say their pet's weight is ideal (both PDSA PAW Report 2023; the owner figure is its 2022 reading). Spotting it early is mostly a matter of writing things down.
The working
The formula is on the screen, not behind it
From the scales to the bowl
- No weight, no targetIt offers you the weigh-in rather than inventing a number
- Resting need70 × kg0.75 — the sum is printed, not just the answer
- Daily rangePublished maintenance bands, shifted by neutering, age and how busy the dog is
- Treats, separatelyTen per cent of the midpoint, on its own bar
A real weigh-in, first
No weight, no target. The card says “No usable weight yet” and offers you the weigh-in instead of inventing a number — and a typo is refused the same way, because nothing above 130 kg produces a target at all.
Resting need (RER)
70 × kg0.75 — what your dog burns doing absolutely nothing. The card shows the sum, not just the answer: 70 × 20 kg^0.75 ≈ 662 kcal.
Daily range (MER)
Then published maintenance bands (Pet Nutrition Alliance · FEDIAF 2024): a neutered adult 1.4–1.6 × resting, an entire adult 1.6–1.8. A low-energy dog and a senior of eight or over each move the band down 0.2, an active one up 0.4, and the low end never drops below 1.0 × resting.
Treats, metered separately
Ten per cent of the range's midpoint, on its own small bar that reads “Treats 40 / 99 kcal” and turns red when the biscuits go over. They still count in the day's total — the meter just stops them hiding inside the dinner.
Take the middle case: neutered, five years old, twenty kilos, an ordinary amount of energy. Resting need 662 kcal, band 1.4–1.6, the day at 927–1059 kcal, treats 99 kcal. Meals fill a bar drawn as that band — not as a line, because there isn't a line. The garden dog from the top of this page lands at 662–794: two shifts down, one for her age and one for the warm patch, and her low end sits exactly on her resting need, because the band's floor never goes below it.
Worth knowing. The app says this on the same card: “Individual dogs genuinely vary — by up to ±50% from any formula. Trust the weight trend and body condition over the number.” And under it, every time you open the screen rather than once at setup: “For a personalised feeding plan, ask your vet — this range is a starting point, never a prescription.”
The refusal
Puppies get a refusal, not a guess
Dogoos knows it's a puppy from the birthday on the profile, or from the stage set to Puppy. Once it knows, it stops — not a hedged estimate, not a range with a warning taped to it, no target at all. The screen reads “Puppies grow — vets guide that”, and where the figure would sit: “No target shown — puppy feeding is your vet's call (see below).” So fill the birthday in: a profile that says nothing about age is read as an adult, and an adult gets an adult's band.
The card gives the reason and the rule in one breath: growth feeding, especially for large breeds, is where real harm can happen, so Dogoos “doesn't estimate targets for dogs under a year”. Your vet sets that plan; meal logging carries on regardless, the record building without pretending to have a target. The same line is drawn at the other end: the band's floor never falls below resting maintenance, because feeding below resting is a weight-loss plan, and that's a veterinary conversation.
Four ways in
Scan the pack, or just tell Rex
The scan is told to take only what's printed — “OMIT any field you cannot read clearly — never guess or compute a value that is not printed” — and to record calories only where the label declares an energy value. Plenty of UK packs don't. Where all five constituents are printed — protein, fat, fibre, moisture and ash — Dogoos fills the energy in itself with modified Atwater factors, into a field you can still edit, and names the sum on screen: “Compute kcal from the constituents (modified Atwater)”. Miss one of the five and the field stays empty: a typical moisture or ash figure would be a guess, and it doesn't guess.
Then it hands the numbers back before anything saves — “Check what we read”, “AI can misread shiny or curved packs” — and what you keep is stamped “Read from the label — checked by you.” Nonsense is caught on the way in: energy outside 40–900 kcal per 100 g is refused by the app and again by the server rules behind it, and constituents totalling more than 105 g in 100 g produce no energy figure at all — a pack can't be more than all of itself.
One scan, one slot. Only the AI label scan spends anything — one a day free, more on paid plans, and the app says so when you've used it: “That's today's label scans used — higher plans get more.” Barcode look-ups, re-logging a usual meal and typing a food in cost nothing.
The one-tap version
Logging has to be faster than not logging
Most dogs eat the same thing every day, so after the first few meals Dogoos stops asking: “Usual meals — tap to log again” puts the regular bowl one tap away, grams and calories already on the chip. Or say it and let Rex file it. A week in, seven bars sit against the shaded target band — the view that catches the Thursday habit nobody meant to start.
The boundary
Five things it does. Five it refuses, on purpose.
What it does
- Builds a daily calorie range from a real weigh-in, and shows the formula
- Reads the constituents off a pack you photograph — then asks you to check them
- Keeps treats on their own ten-per-cent meter, and turns it red when they're over
- Logs meals offline, and lets Rex file one from a sentence
- Lets Rex file a meal whose calories nobody knows — logged as zero, not invented; typed in, it asks you for the number
What it won't do
- Set a target for a dog under a year — puppy feeding goes to your vet
- Write a weight-loss plan; the range's floor is resting maintenance
- Recommend a therapeutic or prescription diet, ever
- Rate or rank a food — it reads what's printed, it doesn't judge the recipe
- Guess a constituent the pack doesn't print — miss one of the five and the energy box stays blank
Questions, answered
Feeding, honestly
How many calories does my dog need a day?
For a healthy adult: 70 × weight in kilos to the power 0.75 gives the resting requirement, then a maintenance band on top — 1.4–1.6 × resting for a neutered adult, 1.6–1.8 for an entire one, down 0.2 for a senior of eight or over, up 0.4 for an active dog. Dogoos does the sum from your logged weigh-in and shows both steps. It's a starting point, not a prescription — your vet adjusts it for the dog in front of them.
Why won't it just give me one number?
Because one number would be wrong with confidence. Individual dogs vary by up to ±50% from any feeding formula (Merck Veterinary Manual), so Dogoos shows a band and tells you to trust the weight trend and body condition over the figure.
Can Dogoos tell me how much to feed a puppy?
No, and that's on purpose. Once it knows the dog is under a year — from the birthday on the profile, or the stage set to Puppy — no target is calculated at all: the screen says “Puppies grow — vets guide that” and sends you to your vet, because growth feeding, especially for large breeds, is where real harm can happen. You can still log every meal; the record builds, the guesswork doesn't. A profile with no age on it is read as an adult, so put the birthday in.
Does it do weight-loss plans?
No. The bottom of the range never falls below resting maintenance, so Dogoos will not hand you a deficit to feed to. Losing weight safely is a veterinary plan with a target weight and check-ins; what Dogoos gives you is the evidence to start that conversation. More on spotting it here.
What if the pack doesn't print calories?
Many don't — an energy declaration isn't mandatory on UK and EU pet food. Where all five analytical constituents are printed (protein, fat, fibre, moisture and ash) Dogoos fills the energy box from modified Atwater factors and leaves it there for you to check or change, with the sum it used named on screen. Miss one of the five and the box stays empty rather than taking a typical value, which would be a guess. A figure outside 40–900 kcal per 100 g is refused as a misread instead of being saved as a food.
Is any of this behind the paywall?
No. The calorie range, the treat meter, the weekly chart, meal logging and one real AI label scan a day are free on every plan, with no trial clock. Paid plans get more label scans a day — that's the only difference on this screen.
Feed the dog in front of you,
not the average one in the formula
Open the web app 🦴
Free on every plan · Label scans use the phone camera