should a dog drink in a day, i noticed my old girl [ large breed ] was drinking alot more water just lately, i took her to the vet and had bloodtest done, that came back clear and a urine sample that said she had a urine infection, after a course of tablets took another sample and they said it was very diluted and i needed to measure how much water she was drinking in 24 hrs, she drank 3 ltrs 200mils but some of that was dribble [ she's not the most clean drinker ] she weighs 45 kgs and i have read so many different things on the net it's got me confused , just hope someone on here knows just how much they should drink , thanks in advance

Maybe best to ask the vet, but of course you have to take into consideration what she eats as well. Eg. if she eats wet food, raw meat, soaked kibble, anything like that with plenty of moisture in, she will need less water than if she is fed dry kibble and similar.

she is on fish4dogs , i was just wondering if the fact i have had the heating on and she is very thick longcoated would make her want to drink more , we are going back to vets today , so will see what they say, thanks for your reply

All of mine drink gallons of water when they are on fish4dogs. I have tried soaking it but it makes no difference.
My 5 month old pups were getting too bloated because of the amount they drank, as soon as I changed their diet they were fine.

danielle-k9 that really interesting , i changed my girl on to it about 5 months ago , even at the age of 12 i thought she might benefit from it , think i might change her back to her old food depending on what the vet says ,

According to a calculation somewhere my 20kg dogs are meant to drink just over a litter a day on dry food so 3 litres for 45kg does not sound too much especially if you have heating on and she gets hot.

Is f4ds salty at all thinking about all the fish ?

I'm now curious. How much fluid is a dog meant to drink/have a day, realise it will increase with the weight of a dog, exertion & temperature.

Dose it also balance out to the same sort of amount when you take into account the fluid in wet food against the extra required when feeding kibble?

As I said I found a table years ago and based on fluid needs per kg of dogs weight my 20kg dogs should have just over a litre, which corresponds to me filling their big water bowl twice daily.

i went back to the vets with 3 urine samples , only 1 was concentrated the other 2 very dilute , the vet mentioned a disease called canine diabetic insipidus but if she had that she would not be able to hold any water overnight and since the infection she's been dry night and day in the house, the vet said the amount of water she is drinking is way too much even for a house dog, so we spoke about diet and the vet said that because fish4dogs was over 55% fish then it's possible there is too much salt in there and thats making my girl more thirsty so needing to wee more , so now i am changing her over to naturaldiet [ senior ] brown rice and pasta , if i don't see any improvement a week after the complete change over i have to take another sample and then see a specialist if nothings changed , my girl is showing no signs of illness eating well, playing, looks fantastic for 12 yrs old and loves her walks , i really hope the diet change helps so fingers crossed ,

I hope the diet change works.. good luck..

A lot of people in my breed feed this food and none of them have mentioned increased thirst, though my breed seem to do well on fish.

If the calculation I did years ago is correct 3 litres of water for such a large dog would not be excessive intake in a warm house.

Also if they are messy drinkers how much is spilt or dumped to replace with fresh?

Have you gone from a wet food to a dry food or gone from a different dry diet to Fish 4 dogs?

she was on beta sensitive for a few years with wetfood more of a treat , she does get water all over when she drinks infact sometimes she just scoops it up and walks away leaving a trail lol , it was the vet that mentioned natures diet and because i knew she liked it anyway thought it was worth a try ,

> the vet said the amount of water she is drinking is way too much even for a house dog

Buster drinks approx 3 litres of water per day. He also has his kibble soaked in water, so that is about another 1 litre. He is approx 90kg but he not very active atall, lounges around all day, has a 30min stroll once per day.

Have you got a puppy in the hosue? I ask becasue when we got Buster as a puppy, our old dog started drinking more, he had a bit of a thing about getting all the water before pup could.

hi masstifflover , no my youngest is 2 yrs old and keeps clear of the old girl and her dish , your boy sounds if he drinks the same as my girl , when he goes for a wee does it go on forever , when my girl wees there is loads of it and pale in colour ,

I don't want to alarm you, but my Giant Archie died last year as a result of diabetes insipidus. He started leaking wee in may and first thing I was asked by my vets was to check his water consumption which was double what it should have been. He was 45-47kg and should have been drinking around 2,6l but he was drinking 5+.
He had an MRI scan which revealed a tumour in his pituatury gland. Because of this tumour his pituatury gland didn't produce the hormone that regulates the kidneys, hence he was leaking wee and was constantly thirsty.
When he had his MRI, the neurologist told me that they can live with the tumour for years, Archie lived 3 months and 10 days. In the last couple of weeks he spent his days looking for water. If it'd been raining at night he'd lick garden furniture, decking, patio, anything that had water on it.
In the end cancer spread all over him within days and we had to make the hearbreaking decision to let him go.
I'm still quite angry because everybody kept telling me that I was writing him off too early, but I knew my boy and I knew he was dying.
Looking back now, I think he'd had the tumour for a while, but his behavior at the time was his 'normal' behaviour so I didn't think it would be something sinister.
Still miss him so much and writing this has brought it all back.
I'm sure your girl hasn't got a tumour, but if you want to ask me anything please send me a message.
Diabetes insipidus is a rare illness, but I also think in a milder form its symptoms could easily be missed.
If we hadn't had wooden floors, I don't think I would have noticed Archies leaking because in the beginning it was just the odd dribble.

> when he goes for a wee does it go on forever

He's just been out for a wee now (4:30pm), it was about 5 seconds long, there is usually a lot of it, it's yellow (can see the colour as it comes out (LOL I actually went down the garden to have a close-look!!), looks like the yellow youd expect wee to look) and his wee smells like you'd expect an entire male dogs wee to smell.

His last wee was bout 1pm today, he wees about 3-4 times per day, (not including scent-mark-squirts on a walk).

He drinks about 4-5 times per day, once after each 2 meals, once after his walk and once or twice at other times depending on what he's doing (he doesn't do much and usually prefers to spend the day lounging around, unless we have a visitor and then he's up & about going through his repertoir of tricks to try and scav a treat out of them).