Hi 

Sorry but I think this might be a long one!

My female staffie (2yrs) has started to do a really strange thing.  When she's left alone (we leave her in the kitchen) she has started to turn her food and water bowl over.  She then proceeds to "play" with them all over the kitchen floor.  So everythime we get home we end up wading through a puddle of water.  She isn't left along for long (3 hours max) and she's not left alone everyday.  Even if we nip for out 20 minutes we end up with the same situation on our return.

This has only recently started happening (in the past fortnight).  I don't know if this has any influence on the situation but she's just had a phantom pregnancy which ended about 10 days ago.  She did have mood swings during that but this food bowl tipping seems to coincide with the end of her phantom.  Could they be linked?

And also does anybody have any suggestions to prevent this?  Part of me wonders if its separation anxiety but she doesn't cry, whine or anything else.  She does occasionally chew things that are left lying around but she'll do this at any opportunity in any room in the house!

Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated as i'm sick of mopping up!

Thanks
Leanne

have you tried a heavy ceramic dog water bowl one that she cant lift up?

My 9 month collie pup was doing this too. She could even scoot the ceramic water bowl around and metal bowls she just tips over and then paddles around in the water and biscuit - bless :rolleyes:   I've put a feeding stand in the kitchen now and that's done the trick. She can't move the whole stand as I've filled the legs with water and she can't get a grip of the dishes as they are sunk into the plastic of the stand. The only problem is it may be too tall for your staffie? Mine came from Petsathome and is about 12" high.

Hi

Can't believe I didn't think of a heavier bowl! Doh! :rolleyes:

I'll try that
Thanks

Well my sweet little GSD pup would paddle and tip over the steel water bowl, so we replaced it with a heavy ceramic one, which he could still tip, and he broke about a fornight later after carrying it up the hall.

He just liked playing with water, so we tried just keeping an inch in the bottom and constantly topping up - he just worked a bit harder with the splashing!

We ended up with a plastic bucket with half a dozen large pebbles in (Which he tried to dunk his head in to fish the pebbles out, but never quite managed)  bless  :rolleyes:

This seems to have cured the problem  :)

regards,

Matt

Max had a cute little habit in the evenings of carrying his water bowl from the kitchen into the living room when it was empty, for which he got praise for being so clever to let me know it needed refilling - big mistake - he then started bringing it whilst it still had water in it, slopping it all over the carpet on his way to me!!!!!! LOL
Problem solved with a feeding station - he's quite a big dog so eating and drinking from raised bowls are better for him too.

Well thank god it's not just me!  Today has been our first good day in a fortnight - no puddles, no tipping.  In fact she's been a little angel all day today (I've probably spoken too soon there!)

Thanks for your advice.

We made a mistake like that too, when I was a kid, with the family dog.  We fed the cats out side on the back porch and the dog would come up and eat their food.  We told him not to and he instantly understood that he was not allowed to eat the cats' food on the back porch.  Doggy solution - pick up the dishes and carry them down off the porch.