About DogCalorieCalc
DogCalorieCalc is maintained by an independent developer. It exists for one reason: to turn the two lines of veterinary arithmetic behind a dog's daily calorie needs into something you can actually use, with the working shown.
What this site is
The core of the site is a free dog calorie calculator. You enter your dog's weight, life stage, neuter status, activity and body condition, and it returns the resting energy requirement (RER), the maintenance energy requirement (MER), the daily portion in cups or grams, and a step-by-step trace of the arithmetic.
How it calculates
The method is the standard two-step veterinary approach: RER = 70 × (body weight in kg)0.75, then MER = RER × a published factor. Every factor comes from a published veterinary source — the MSD Veterinary Manual's caloric-requirements table — and the row your dog lands on is highlighted in the result. Nothing here is a proprietary estimate.
Why show the formula
Because the number is an estimate and the inputs are yours. If you can see which coefficient was used, you can sanity-check it against what your vet says and tell whether a change came from the dog or from a field you moved. The calculator also states its limits plainly: it does not diagnose and does not replace a veterinary consultation.
Privacy by design
The calculator runs entirely in your browser. The numbers you enter are never uploaded and nothing is stored — there is no account, no sign-in and no saved history. See the Privacy Policy for the full details, including how third-party advertising works on this site.
About this calculator
The tool on the home page is deliberately narrow. It answers one question — how many calories should this dog eat today — and it shows the whole calculation rather than just printing a number. Three consequences follow from that, and they are worth knowing before you rely on the result.
Weight drives everything else. RER depends on body weight raised to the power of 0.75, so a small error in weight moves the answer more than any other field. A 1 kg mistake on a 10 kg dog shifts the result by roughly 7%, which is more than the gap between most of the factor rows. Weigh your dog if you possibly can — guessing “about 12 kg” is the single largest source of error in the whole tool.
The range is not padding. The source for these factors states plainly that individual animals can vary by as much as 50% from the predicted value. That is why every result carries a ±50% band rather than a single confident figure. Two dogs of identical weight sitting on identical rows can genuinely need different amounts, and the only way to find out which one you have is to feed the number for a fortnight and re-check body condition.
What it leaves out on purpose. There is no cat mode, because cats use a different set of energy factors and folding them into the same table would quietly produce wrong numbers. There is no feeding schedule, because meal frequency does not enter the equation — it only splits the same daily total. There is no saved history and no account, because keeping your dog’s details on someone else’s server buys you nothing the tool actually needs.
Get in touch
If you spot a wrong coefficient, a confusing label, or a result that doesn't match your vet's advice, send a note to contact@dogcaloriecalc.com — corrections are welcome.