Frequently Asked Questions

All of our ingredients are sourced from reputable food suppliers and local farms. We never use feed-grade ingredients, and we don’t process our ingredients to be shelf-stable. This ensures that your dog gets the highest quality, fresh, most natural nutrients available.

The Happy Hounds recipes are simple in nature and have all been formulated by approved pet nutritionists to be certified complete and balanced meals.

See individual product pages for a detailed list of ingredients and nutritional analysis.

Each tub of Happy Hounds comes to you frozen. Once defrosted, it must be kept in the fridge and should be eaten within 4 days.

We recommend a maximum of 6 months from manufacture date. Every Happy Hounds tub or vac bag comes with a best before date to help you.

Happy Hounds is formulated to be a complete and balanced meal. It is packed with fresh, nutritional goodness so you can be confident your dog is getting what they need in each meal. Meal size is determined by your individual dog’s age, breed, size, activity-profile and environment. Check out our feeding guide for an estimate of how much is right for your dog.

All of our recipes have been carefully formulated to include puppies, so absolutely, you can feed your new puppy Happy Hounds. Go to our feeding guideline to get the right quantities.

The recommendation is not to mix your pellets with Happy Hounds for long periods as each meal is formulated as a balanced meal and you risk weight gain. To avoid possible weight gain, feed your dog pellets one meal and Happy Hounds the other meal.

As most dogs have been fed the same food for a reasonable period of time, it is important to introduce the new food gradually to avoid any digestive adjustment problems.

If you decide to shift to Happy Hounds entirely, then we suggest the following:

Start by mixing 25% Happy Hounds with 75% old food. Slowly, introduce Happy Hounds proportionately over the next 5–7 days until you are feeding 100% Happy Hounds.

Rotating between the different protein varieties of Happy Hounds offers ensures that your hounds get a great variety of proteins and fats for improved microbiome diversity. And, they don’t have to eat the same meal every day.

Your hound’s health is our priority. We are obsessed with making sure they get all the nutrients they need in every meal. So to make sure every meal is balanced and complete, our food is formulated with leading pet nutritionists and then certified for compliance against Act 36/1947 by the South African Department of Agriculture.

All of our food recipes—beef, chicken, fish, love bug, venison, and lamb and venison—have been certified against Act 36/1947 and have the associated V numbers to verify this certification. See individual product pages for the V numbers.

Our food is balanced and complete and not a complimentary meal. While we were waiting for the certification from the DAFF (which took over 12 months), we had to legally use an interim label that says “treat”. To minimise waste, we continue to use some of our interim packaging. Once our new packaging is fully implemented, it will be labelled as "balanced and complete" instead of "treat".

All of our food is very lightly cooked and not raw. Lightly cooked food improves the bioavailability of the food (dogs digest more of the goodness) and flavour.

As all our food is made from ethically-sourced, natural ingredients, which can have a range of colours and textures, you may notice variations in the colour or texture of the food. This may also affect the colour and texture of your pup's poop from time to time.

• Supervise chewing. Don’t leave your dog to chew a bone alone. They may bite off too much and choke or gnaw too aggressively and cause injury.
• Do not give bones to a dog who has had restorative dental work. These dogs are at risk for tooth breakage and dental problems.
• Do not give bones with marrow to dogs who get pancreatitis. Marrow is high in fat and can cause a flare up or diarrhoea.
• Do not give a bone to a dog who’s likely to bite it in half and swallow large chunks. You know how your dog eats. If your dog swallows food quickly rather than chewing, a bone presents a risk.
• Give the bone after a meal. A less hungry dog is less likely to chew and swallow a bone quickly.
• Refrigerate bones when not in use. Throw them out after three to four days. This reduces the likelihood of contamination.
• Don’t feed your dog pork or rib bones. These bones are more likely to splinter. Our marrow bones are 100% beef.

Only available for Cape Town

1. Register your new account

Set up an account on Happy Hounds. Simply click SIGN UP/LOGIN in the top menu bar to register your new account.

2. Go shopping

Click on SHOP (top menu if you are on a computer, side menu if you are on your phone).

When selecting a product to put into your cart, you have the option of choosing to either put it into your weekly, bi-monthly or monthly subscription or as a once off purchase. That way, you have the freedom to build your regular subscription, but we can also add a little something that you want delivered just the once.

When selecting your favourite Happy Hounds products. You can choose your preferred proteins, sizes and packaging for all our food as well as select the treats and toppers you would like delivered regularly. You also have the option to choose different subscription intervals for different products, for example you want your fresh food delivered weekly but bones every 2 weeks.

Once you have chosen your products, subscription intervals , click ADD TO CART.

3. Confirm your order details and delivery address or collection details

Then click on the cart top right of the screen. Your cart will provide you a summary of all your selected subscription products as well as the frequency for delivery (weekly / bi-monthly/monthly).

You will need to confirm the address where you would like the very first order delivered as well as the address for all subsequent deliveries. 

These will be pre-populated with the address you registered with your account (Step 1). Local Shipping costs will be calculated for that address.

You can change the addresses provided by clicking Change Address and entering your new address details. 

For Cape Town orders, you can opt to select Local Pickup if you would prefer to collect from our Woodstock HQ.

Once you are happy that all the delivery details are correct for your initial and recurring deliveries, click PROCEED TO CHECKOUT

4. Confirm your billing and payment details

Your billing address will be pre-populated with your registered account address.

You can add any order/delivery notes you need us to know.

You have another opportunity to confirm delivery or pick up (Cape Town only).

Please note that the only payment method available for subscriptions is credit card through Stripe.  

Stripe, is an international payment gateway. There are no local payment gateway options for subscriptions on Shopify platforms. Some South African banks have implemented a policy of charging an international transaction fee on payments through Stripe. We apologise for the inconvenience, but despite our best efforts to get this reversed, we have not been successful.

We have other payment options available for once-off orders: Paystack (credit card), Ozow (instant EFT) and Zapper (QR Code), if that suits you better.

5. Checkout and subscribe

When you are ready and all your billing and payment details are correct, click CHECKOUT.

You will be directed to our Stripe payment gateway to enter your credit card details. Your card will be charged for each subsequent delivery unless you pause or cancel the subscription.

6. Order confirmation

You will receive an order confirmation email with all your subscription details.

7. Order renewal

For weekly subscriptions, your order will renew on the same day and at the same time as your original subscription order, each week. This means you will be charged on that day and your order will come into our system for processing on that day of the week. 

The same applies for a 2 weekly subscription.

For monthly subscriptions, your order will renew on the same date and at the same time as your original subscription order each month. This means you will be charged on that date and your order will come into our system for processing on that date each month.

1. Click on 'My Account' top right of your screen. Then your account will show up.

2. Click on 'Manage Subscriptions' and your subscriptions will show, indicating which ones are active.

3. Click on the 'Click here to view your subscription' and a page will come up where you have the option to edit the following;

- add or delete products in your subscription

- your shipping address

- your credit card information

- pause or cancel your subscription

Cape Town & Surrounds

Within 1–2 days (subject to stock availability)

Weekdays only

Delivery by 18h00

You will get an email when your order is out for delivery and then an sms when the courier is on your leg of his journey.

We work hard to get your order to you as quickly as possible, but sometimes pesky load shedding ruins our planning and our drivers get stuck in the resultant traffic. We apologise and ask for your patience.

Cape Town

We currently deliver as far as Noordhoek, Gordons Bay, Stellenbosch, Klapmuts and Melkbosstrand.

Cape Town & Surrounds
Flat rate: R 85

Each Happy Hounds tub is fully recyclable and widely recycled in South Africa.

It is important to us that we minimise the impact we have on the planet and so we use recyclable packaging options where available. You can read more about our sustainability journey here.

Since the start of New Year, we have seen a sudden, exponential spike in new customers in Johannesburg and Pretoria, which has continued despite us making a decision to scale back on our marketing.

Perhaps, counterintuitively, this phenomenal growth has had a detrimental impact on our service offering to our Gauteng clients over the past two months. Not only has our kitchen in Cape Town struggled to produce the quantity and variety of orders we have been receiving, but delivering frozen meals in good time across the region has also been a challenge.

Providing excellent customer service is as important to us as providing top quality meals. We are committed to putting Pets and People before Profit and ensuring the Happy Hounds business grows sustainably and successfully over the longer-term, so we also continue protecting the environment and supporting the local farmers who rely on us.

We have therefore had to make the extremely tough decision to halt Happy Hounds meals in Gauteng from the end of March 2024, we will, however, continue delivering meals to customers in Cape Town. This decision will allow us to invest in the key operational resources we need in order to return to Gauteng and also expand to other provinces in the near future.

This is not a goodbye, but a see you later. 🙂

- Our current Gauteng subscribers who have renewals expected in March will receive these orders. However, our last delivery date will be the 22nd March so we are advising customers who's renewal dates are after the 18th of March to reschedule those earlier, by the 18th, to ensure delivery.

- Happy Hounds has also allocated a limited quantity of meals for non-subscriber Gauteng customers to purchase for delivery during March – these will be available on a first come, first serve basis until this production run is sold out.

- New subscription orders for Gauteng customers are closed.

Please let us know if we can assist further!

Our current Gauteng subscribers who have renewals expected in March will receive these orders. However, our last delivery date will be the 22nd March so we are advising customers who's renewal dates are after the 18th of March to reschedule those earlier, by the 18th, to ensure delivery.

Please let us know if we can assist further!

We are in discussions with our Gauteng stockists to see how we can ensure that our Gauteng customers will still be able to purchase our Happy Hounds meals after March.We will keep all our pack members posted.

While we are not aware of a direct substitute for Happy Hounds, research shows that adding a minimum of 20% fresh food into your dog's diet can help reduce disease markers. Adding a cracked egg, steamed veggies, or lightly cooked meats into your dog's bowl are great ways to include fresh food. Feeding a variety of bioavailable, fresh food meals ensures the team of busy bacteria in your hound’s gut is diverse and can maintain balance and stability in the system.