Hi helpfull people:D

I have an 18 week old White GSD. The problem is water.
I found out recently whilst checking his paws that they are webbed, dont know whether this has anything to do with the fact that he is mad on water but he loooves it. To play, swim or drink.
Its all good fun most of the time apart from when you put down his water bowl and he madly starts digging out the water with his enormous webbed feet :D
But the real reason I wanted to talk about is, he drinks A LOT of water, I do stop him sometimes because he just lapps it up. He seems fit and healthy and the vet has never found anything wrong but it just seems abnormal to me as I have had a few pups and none have drunk this much. He is eating dried puppy food which would make him a bit thirstier but surely not THIS much?

Anyone help??

thx Zoe

Hi Zoe,

I have a 14 week old Golden Retriever. I didn't realise quite how webbed his feet would be either :) Like yours, he is also being fed on a dry complete food which will definitely be increasing his thirst. I leave water down for him all the time, and refill the bowl once a day when it is getting a bit low. Yes, he does seem to drink loads (making himself burp loudly at times :rolleyes: ) I don't think that you should try to stop him drinking. If he's thirsty, he needs the water! Especially as the vet has checked him over and says he is okay.

One more thing. The warm weather that we have at the moment is making Dylan (my pup) quite hot, and so he's panting and needs more water to help keep him cool.

I wouldn't worry about your pup's drinking.

HTH,

Sarah

If you are feeding dry food in it's own then your pup will be thirsty ! Don't restrict the amount the pup is drinking as he needs the fluid !

Lucy

Hi

My GSD pup (we'll he's nearly 20 months old now) also drinks LOADS of water. I worried to begin with but after a vet checkup we figure he's just a thirsty boy ;-)

Jayne

ok nice one thank you. I was a bit concerened because I was at training this week and the instructor was talking about taking the water bowl away if he seemed to be drinking too much at one time because he may swallow too much air and this causes his tummy to knot up or something :s it has a name but I forget what it was sorry. Any body not heard any thing like this then? :(

Your trainer probably means 'bloat'. It's not good for a dog's stomach, to drink loads immediately after exercise. Trying to gulp the water down while still panting heavily may cause him to swallow air. This is probably what she means. HTH.

Monty's Mum :)

I always allow the dogs access to water, but if I feel they are gulping or drinking too much at once I tell them to stop (or remove them from the water bowl) for a minute until they've have time for what they've had to hit their tummy. Generally they don't want any more after this, but if they do I allow them more in moderation. I use the term 'gently' for a LOT of things, one of them being when they gulp water - and they will either slow down now or stop.

Wendy

When our springer was 8 weeks old she drank a whole bowl of water in one go, we had no idea she had done it till she waddled in to the lounge with a huge belly, it was a quite a large bowl, it made her ill, fortunately she vomited most of it straight back up. The vet said its not uncommon for a puppy to try and drink all the water thats in a bowl, and they can actually overload there little systems with it.
We made sure we only put a little in the bowl for a long time after, but it gave us a scare.

Robert.