Getting started

Compass Diet helps you build a balanced home-prepared diet for a dog: you choose the ingredients and the grams, and it checks the result against the AAFCO adult maintenance profile as you type.

Nothing here is a setting. It is the order the work actually happens in.

1. Choose a plan

Owner and Professional start with a 14-day free trial (Provider, for clinics, does not). Without an active plan the app is read-only: you can open what you have saved, but you cannot add animals or change recipes. See Plans and pricing.

2. Add an animal

Name, weight in pounds and body condition are what the engine needs. Weight and body condition set the daily calorie requirement, so get them right before building a recipe. See Adding an animal.

3. Create a recipe for that animal

Open the animal and press New recipe. A recipe belongs to one animal because the calorie target comes from that animal's weight and condition.

4. Fill the blocks, top to bottom

Protein first, then carbohydrate, then fat, then micronutrients. Each protein, carbohydrate and fat row offers a Suggested weight that fills what is left of that block's calorie target. Work down the page: the suggestions further down depend on what you entered above.

5. Fix the fails

The audit on the right lists every nutrient below its minimum or above its maximum. For most deficits it offers an ingredient and an exact weight to add. Add one, then look at the audit again: each fix is worked out on its own, so one can move another.

6. Save

Save recipe is a button, not automatic. The audit updates as you type, but nothing is stored until you press it.

The thing worth knowing up front

This is a formulation aid, not veterinary care. It checks a recipe against published nutrient minimums and maximums for healthy adult dogs. For an animal with a medical condition, or before a significant diet change, involve your veterinarian.