Vet-prescribed feeding for obese Basset Hound

A vet-prescribed weight loss plan for a Basset Hound is serious business — those dogs are built low to the ground and carry extra weight hard on their joints, so getting portions exactly right genuinely matters here. The most important features for your situation are gram-level portion accuracy, mechanical reliability (a feeder that jams or over-dispenses even occasionally will wreck a controlled diet), and ease of cleaning. Cheap feeders are often the worst offenders on all three counts. Can you tell me a bit more — is this one dog feeding solo, what kibble are you using, and what gram target did the vet give you per meal?

60g per meal with small-pellet kibble is exactly the scenario where a lot of feeders fail — the auger or disc mechanism loses accuracy with lighter, smaller pieces and you can end up 10-15g off without realising it. That's meaningful on a diet this strict. And Basset Hounds are impressively determined when food is involved, so tamper resistance matters. Can you tell me where the feeder will live — kitchen worktop, floor, utility room — and is there any chance another pet in the house might try to eat from it?

In that case I'd go with the PetSafe Smart Feed Automatic Dog Feeder. It dispenses by weight rather than just volume, which gives you genuine gram-level accuracy with small kibble like Royal Canin Satiety — most competitors use a rotating disc that's calibrated for larger pieces and drifts badly with finer pellets. It connects to an app so you can log every meal, adjust portions precisely, and get alerts if a meal is missed or the hopper runs low. The lid locks firmly and the unit is sturdy enough that a determined Basset won't tip or pry it open on the kitchen floor. It's also straightforward to disassemble and clean properly, which matters because damp kibble residue in a feeder is a real hygiene issue. For a medically supervised diet where the gram target is fixed by your vet, this is the one I'd trust.

Yes — the PetSafe app logs every feeding with a timestamp and the portion dispensed, and you can export or screenshot that history easily. That's genuinely useful for a vet check-in where they want to see whether the schedule has been followed consistently. One practical tip: when you first set it up, run a few test portions and weigh them on a kitchen scale to confirm the calibration with your specific kibble. Royal Canin Satiety is a fairly uniform pellet so it should be accurate straight away, but it takes two minutes to verify and gives you confidence before Clifford's diet officially starts.

Good luck with Clifford's diet — Basset Hounds at a healthy weight move so much more easily, and seven isn't old for the breed if you can get the weight down. The PetSafe Smart Feed is available on Amazon UK with Prime delivery, so you should be up and running quickly. If you find the portion sizes need tweaking as the vet adjusts the plan, the app makes that a 30-second job.