Edie MacKenzie

Edie MacKenzie is a published author, traveler, dog lover, and tortoise enthusiast. Passionate about what she does, her books provide peopel a firm grounding in the dog breed and their unique characteristics with a nice touch of humor.

The Classic Toilet-Drinking Dog Issue (Part 2)

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A dog who drinks from a stagnant puddle, a lake, or a pond is exposed to more potentially hazardous germs than one who drinks from a toilet.

This doesn’t mean that dogs can’t get sick from drinking toilet water. A toilet that’s stopped up or hasn’t been cleaned in a long time will contain enough germs to trigger a day or two of diarrhea or vomiting. More worrisome than germs are chemicals.

In our perpetual battle to keep bathrooms clean, we pour all sorts of chemicals into toilet bowls and tanks. Some of these products taste perfectly fine to dogs, but can make them ill if they drink enough.

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Even though toilets are sanitary enough for quenching canine thirst, most people prefer to keep the lids closed. Mainly, it’s about etiquette. No one wants to listen to their dog noisily lapping up a toilet-water cocktail. And no one wants to clean up the trail of spittle and water that invariably follows.

Get A New Water Bowl

Some dogs drink out of the toilet because they like the taste. Others do it because they dislike the water in their regular dishes. It’s not the water itself that’s usually the problem, but what the water is served in. Plastic dishes, for example, absorb odors and may give water an off taste. Switching to a metal or ceramic dish – and washing it regularly – can make your dog’s usual water supply a little more palatable – and make him less interested in finding alternatives.

Try Placing The Water Bowl Where It Will Be Cooler

Dogs definitely like their water cool. Water that sits in a sunny kitchen may be 10°F warmer than water that’s kept in a cool, tiled bathroom. If you don’t have a different place to keep the bowl, put in a few ice cubes every time you change the water. Dogs will appreciate the extra coolness as well as the crunchy ice.

Final Toilet Avoidance Tip

The easiest way to keep dogs out of the toilet is to lower the lid. Unless, that is, you happen to live with a very smart and determined dog who learns to uncap the toilet on his own. If that happens – and some dogs like toilet water so much that wedging their noses under the lid is hardly an insurmountable obstacle – you’ll either have to keep the bathroom door closed or secure the toilet lid by putting something heavy on top.

The Classic Toilet-Drinking Dog Issue (Part 1)

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To people, a dog who drinks from the toilet is just gross. But to a dog, the toilet is a constantly freshened source of good water. This is completely understandable. Just think back before dogs had people laying out their food and water every day – they had to provide their own refreshments. They developed a knack for choosing the cleanest, freshest water from the sources they had available.

Those who didn’t were sure to get parasites or other water-borne diseases. With no veterinarians or medications in sight, these dogs passed away. Those who learned the ropes, on the other hand, lived to reproduce, and their puppies instinctively knew what they should and shouldn’t drink.

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Click Here Now – -and watch Chet’s Free Dog Training Video.

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While their judgment certainly isn’t perfect, dogs have good reasons for choosing the toilet bowl over their water dishes. Consider how people like their water: cool, freshly poured, and out of a clean glass. The toilet is probably in the coolest room in the house. The water in the toilet gets changed more often than the water in their bowls. And porcelain make a nice goblet that doesn’t alter the taste of water like metal or plastic bowls may.

Dogs Love Bathrooms With a Toilet

People tend to be squeamish about bathrooms. We worry about germs. We scour and scrub to eliminate every last scent. We shut and lock the doors and demand total privacy. We do everything we can, in short, to keep our bathrooms separate from the rest of our lives.

Dogs, on the other hand, aren’t squeamish at all. Consider their usual habits. These are animals who will eagerly sniff, roll on, and devour month-old roadkill, who view cat boxes as convenient sources of takeout, and who greet each other (and people) by sniffing backsides. From their point of view, the bathroom is just an extension of their naturally earthy tastes. They don’t think about off-putting odors when they drink from the toilet. If anything, they probably like the smell.

There’s no question that toilets environments that do contain germs, but so does most everything else around us. Even an immaculate, freshly scrubbed bowl contains thousands, if not millions, of bacteria. But dogs don’t care. After all, they didn’t evolve in the dining room at the Plaza Hotel. For most of their evolutionary history, they lived in pretty rough surroundings.

As a result, their immune systems are remarkably sturdy. A toilet may not be clean by our standards, but for dogs they’re almost as hygienic as Perrier.

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