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Dogs drinking from toilet


Does your dog drink from the toilet?  

  1. 1. Does your dog drink from the toilet?

    • No, it can't reach
      8
    • No, I think that's disgusting
      52
    • Yes
      24
    • Other
      20


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I've always thought this was a kind of questionable practice but now I have two 7 month old retriever puppies who flip their water bowl EVERY time I give them water between meals. I know they need access to water and I can't come up with another solution that won't require my constant monitoring.

 

If you've got something else that's worked, please, share!

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Our retrievers happily drink out of the toilet. They think it's a wonderful source of fresh water.

 

I make sure the toilets are clean and have no chemicals in them. I thought it was gross at first, but now it's just the way things are.

 

We do have another water bowl available, but the boys prefer the toilet.

 

:tongue_smilie:

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You can buy "no-spill" water bowls. We have 2. They need to filled a few times a day in the summer and is inconvenient, but keeps puddles off my floor!

 

Can you tell me what kind of no spill bowls you have that work? My puppies are 60+ lbs each (big mouths and growing) and have managed to spill two different kinds of "no spill" bowls. I think they see flipping as a challenge. The first one to flip it must one some kind of prize.

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Talking to a vet once, she said the big concern was that there are residues of cleaning agents that could make them sick or kill them....

 

I clean with baking soda and vinegar. Usually I add lavendar and tea tree oil. Off to check out "no spill" bowls and the effects of my cleaners on dogs.

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We bought a steel bucket at a feed store and keep it in the tub. The dog still will drink out of the toilet sometimes, but I'm trying to train him othrrwise. Between him and the toilet (leaving water all over the seat and floor) and the cat refusing to drink out of bowl, (prefering to dump your glass and drink that), we had to come up wih some solution! This seems to be working.

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Can you tell me what kind of no spill bowls you have that work? My puppies are 60+ lbs each (big mouths and growing) and have managed to spill two different kinds of "no spill" bowls. I think they see flipping as a challenge. The first one to flip it must one some kind of prize.

 

This is the one we keep in the house.

 

We keep this one in a vehicle for when we travel. If you don't over-fill it it won't spill even if turned upside down.

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I had a chow that could lift the lid with her nose and drink anyway. It was sort of like looking at a headless dog merged with a toilet, making loud slurping noises.

Never did figure out how to make her stop.

 

My current Golden (as a puppy) would take her dish and play with it, making FINDING the thing a chore. Even the super heavy crockery ones were destroyed. I ended up getting her a large plastic bowl that had an edge I could run a wire through and attach to the deck to keep it secure.

Edited by Lara in Colo
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I voted other. We keep our bathrooms closed so the youngest kidlet doesn't get into the toilet. ;)

 

I have German Shepherds. I well remember my first one as a puppy (the one in my avatar). A heavy crock water dish and some training worked well for him. I just had to make sure it stayed filled, because if it got empty, he'd fling it across the kitchen floor! He broke it once. :lol:

 

When we're not able to watch them, I always crate pups and new rescue dogs until they're able to be trusted in the house. In the crate, they can have a metal bucket of water hooked to the crate. That's what the rescue group did, so my 2 current rescues are used to that. When loose in the house, I keep the dogs close by until they can be trusted to be in another room, and that way I can train them to treat the crock water dish appropriately.

 

I can't even imagine having 2 lab puppies at the same time. One GSD puppy was bad enough. :lol:

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I voted 'other.' My dog would never do it but not because he's classy or anything. He's just afraid of all of the bathrooms (in the world) because he was bathed in one as a puppy. He won't even enter powder rooms that don't have tubs. Of course, they are confined spaces AND have shiny floors and he's afraid of those things too. :glare:

 

#justsaynotogreyhounds

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My answer is:

 

Yes, but I wish she wouldn't, because I think it's gross.

 

We usually keep the toilet lids down out of habit, but if someone accidentally leaves a lid open then... BAM! My dog is there, drinking out the toilet. She has no excuse, because she doesn't knock over her water dish, and we keep it full.

 

I think she just lies in wait, because she knows it drives me nuts. :lol:

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Absolutely love my water dish. Can't figure out how to copy a link on my phone but go to Amazon and search dig water bowl. It's the first one - Petsafe. I fill it about once a week for 2 smaller Australian Shepherds. You'd have to fill more often I'm sure. It took me awhule to be willing to spend the dollars but it has been worth every penny.

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Our retrievers happily drink out of the toilet. They think it's a wonderful source of fresh water.

 

I make sure the toilets are clean and have no chemicals in them. I thought it was gross at first, but now it's just the way things are.

 

We do have another water bowl available, but the boys prefer the toilet.

 

:tongue_smilie:

 

LOL

 

Maybe it's a retriever thing! Our yellow lab does the same thing!

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I voted other because our current dog does not drink from the toilet. I am assuming his previous owners trained him not to do that. Not that he would have a lot of opportunity because most of my family is trained to put the lid down. Growing up, however, every dog we owned loved to drink from the toilet. The water was constantly being refreshed and the porcelain probably keeps the water quite cool.

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I checked "other". I don't like our dog to drink from the toilet, but sometimes she does. It is not without sloppiness. Nothing like sitting on a seat slippery with water and drool, KWIM? Our dog's outside water is in a 5 gal. bucket. If it's full, even a lab puppy would have to make an effort to tip it because of the weight.

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They have stands that hold the water and food dishes in them for bigger dogs, and I hear those that have had trouble with dogs flipping over their water bowls before. Why not give that a try, and I would never allow my dog to do that, he knows not to go into the bathroom, ever or my parents room. He has a lot of restrictions and obeys them most of the time, your dog can end up getting sick from drinking from the toilet.

 

Why not train them not to? I did that with my dog and he learned very fast, flip bowl, no water.

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You can buy no-spill bowls. Some have a wide base that makes them hard to tip. (They are shaped sort of like a volcano.)

 

Another option is a very heavy ceramic crock. I've been using the same heavy crock for over 20 years -- since I got my first dog in college. It's been through 6 dogs now (we currently have 4), survived a half dozen moves, and all of our kids. It has NEVER been tipped over.

 

Since we have 4 dogs and 4 cats, and we have a vet hospital, we have plenty of experience with bowls, lol. We use typical stainless steel bowls in general at the hospital, but we have a handful of no-tip ones for those dogs who are determined to tip and for batches of puppies, as they always tip everything over.

 

Another option is a bowl that bolts to the wall or the side of a cage/kennel. We use those for our adoptive kittens, who are also prone to tip things over when playing.

 

FWIW, of course our dogs would drink out of the toilet if they didn't have access to cold water and/or if we let them. If we keep full water bowls, they stay out of the toilets. I hate it when they drink out of the toilet both b/c it is nasty and also because then they'll slobber and drip all over the toilet seat, and I don't want to sit on that!

 

HTH

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My dogs can't reach. If they could and did, I'd insist that the lid be kept down after use. Typically the lids are down, due to having had babies around so much, but I don't stress it. If the dogs were drinking from the toilet, and since I don't have any babies, I would probably remind everyone to put the lid down afterwards. Yeah..it's rather nasty.

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My Brittany Spaniel would flip her water bowl over if she was left alone....even if we went outside to do yard work and left her inside!

 

My solution: I don't keep water out for her anymore. I feed and water her outside. She is in and out aaaaaalllll day long anyway, so she can get water whenever she wants from OUTSIDE.

 

I also keep the bathroom doors CLOSED when we are gone because she has been known to raise the lid to the toilet. :glare:

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I voted it is disgusting.

 

The toilets in Australia are designed differently, they only have a small puddle of water way down at the bottom, and when you flush, the water comes in from around just below the seat and whooshes out the bottom. Completely different from the toilets in America/Canada. The first time I saw one of those ( in Canada) I thought there was a blockage in the pipes, why else would the bowel be completely full of water?

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Our dog's outside water is in a 5 gal. bucket. If it's full, even a lab puppy would have to make an effort to tip it because of the weight.

 

 

My solution: I don't keep water out for her anymore. I feed and water her outside. She is in and out aaaaaalllll day long anyway, so she can get water whenever she wants from OUTSIDE.

 

I also keep the bathroom doors CLOSED when we are gone because she has been known to raise the lid to the toilet. :glare:

 

Our dogs drink water when they are outside too. I hate stepping in puddles in my socks, and this is the only thing that has worked. We also have a large waterer with a tank on the top for our cats in the house, but the dogs can't get to it. It's in the same room as the litterboxes. I stuck that inside a huge plastic tub (cambro) so the cats can't splash water out either. Did I mention my dislike for stepping in water with socks on?

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There is a choice of the water fountain... my large dog drinks from the tub. I sometimes keep a bowl in there, otherwise I turn on the water for him when he hops inside. I can hear when he hops in, and if I don't come... he hops out then back inside... :)

Makes it easy when we go camping because he can just drink from the water while it's running from the faucet :)

:)

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