What week 5 tells you
by Ben, co-founder
If a food trial has one milestone worth circling on the calendar, it's week five. In the studies, more than 8 in 10 food-allergic dogs are dramatically better by now - it's often the week owners stop describing the itching in the present tense.
If your dog is clearly better
Brilliant - but don't celebrate with a gravy bone. The trial isn't finished, and one off-menu treat now can blur the picture right when it's getting clear. Keep everything identical through week eight, and film the difference this week while it's fresh.
If nothing's changed yet
Stay with it. A five-week trial only catches about 80% of food-allergic dogs; running the full eight weeks catches more than 90%. That gap is real dogs - slower responders who look like failures at week five and turn the corner in the final fortnight.
Partial counts too. Less chewing at night, calmer paws, better sleep - improvement doesn't have to be dramatic to be meaningful. And if the poos are better even though the skin isn't, the food is doing something; skin is just the slow lane.
Why not just stop at five?
Because the last three weeks are the cheapest part of the whole experiment. You've done the switch, survived the discipline, built the habit. Three more weeks costs nothing new and moves the trial from "probably" to properly answered - whichever way it lands.
Either way, same job this week: same close-up, same spot, same angle. Week five clips make the best before-and-afters.
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