Why Does my Dog Drink Toilet Bowl Water?
Dogs are scavengers and naturally search out food and water. Their ancestors were scavengers and that particular trait continues to be exhibited in our modern day dogs. Have you noticed your dog interested in the garbage? Sniffing the food you’re cooking? Finding food in random places your children may have dropped? This is part of their scavenging.
The toilet bowl is no different
If your dog is thirsty and the toilet bowl is available, he will enjoy a drink from the toilet. Even if there is a bowl of water in another room, he still prefers the toilet bowl water.
Why Does my Dog Prefer the Toilet?
The toilet bowl water is actually often more sanitary than their regular bowl of water. The toilet bowl water is continuously replenished and often a fresh, cold water source. Your dog prefers cold water, just as we do, to normal room temperature water which would be found in their water bowl.
Water from a plastic or metal bowl can also taste like the bowl it is in. So, your dog is essentially choosing clean, flowing water over stagnant, room-temperature water.
Drinking from the toilet bowl is often a concern for pet parents due to the fact that we use chemicals to clean the toilet bowl. If you are using natural, organic cleaning materials, the toilet bowl should not harm him in any way.
Why Are Pets Attracted to Toilet Water?
The fact that your toilet is running (complete with sounds of flowing water) may very well speak to the primal nature of your pet to seek out running water in the wild. According to Dr. Coates, running water tends to be a healthier choice than stagnant water in a natural setting. “Perhaps some of our pets have an instinctive pull towards running water and that’s why they’re attracted to water that ‘moves’ in our homes,” she says.
Ask anyone who has a cat that hangs out on the kitchen counter. Turning on the faucet can be an irresistible temptation for the cat to saunter over and have a sip. Similarly, many dogs love to drink water running from the hose when you’re washing your car or watering the lawn. Even knowing this, pet owners still scratch their heads when, after they go to the trouble of providing fresh water—perhaps even water of a trendy and imported nature—their fur kids still line up for a crack at the toilet when they’re feeling parched.
Coates has another hypothesis. “It could be that some pets prefer the relative solitude of the bathroom. If their water bowl is in the middle of a chaotic home, they might not feel comfortable settling down to drink at that location,” she says.
So, are the dangers of drinking out of the toilet real, or are we worrying ourselves over something that is harmless for our pets?
“I think [the dangers] are real,” says Dr. Patrick Mahaney, a holistic vet who practices in Los Angeles, California. “I’m not a fan of letting your pet drink out of the toilet.”
Dr. Mahaney says, “if you were to swab your average toilet there would be an issue. If you don’t clean your toilet very often, you are going to put your dog or cat at risk for coming down with an infection, such as E. coli, because our feces can contain that—as well as other bacteria.”
The risk of infection increases greatly when we ourselves are sick. According to Dr. Mahaney, humans can pass diseases like Giardia to their animals, and the consumption of toilet water can put your pet on the road to illness. And intestinal bacteria and parasites aren’t the only risks. Humans who are undergoing medical treatments such as chemotherapy can also shed toxic chemical substances in their urine and stool. While the chances of such exposures may be low for pets, there remains a potential for it to happen.
Another danger associated with consuming toilet water come from the chemicals that we use to clean our toilets—with chlorine bleach products being one of the main offenders. Toilet cleaners can contain sodium hypochlorite, hypochlorite salts, sodium peroxide, sodium perborate, and other chemicals that can be lethal when directly consumed.
Restricting your pet’s access to the bathroom for a few hours (and a few flushes) after you’ve cleaned is a good rule of thumb. And never use the types of cleaners that are added to the toilet reservoir. They continuously release chemicals into the water with every fill of the bowl. Of course, it is also a good rule to be vigilant for symptoms of any sort of poisoning.
Poorly diluted toilet bowl cleaners can cause chemical burns in the mouth and throat while going down, as well as other serious complications once fully ingested. Symptoms of bleach ingestion in pets can include vomiting, drooling, redness in and around the mouth, abdominal pain, and a sore throat.
“Any toxin is not good for a pet to ingest,” says Dr. Katie Grzyb of One Love Animal Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. Dr. Coates agrees but adds, “when used properly in a toilet bowl, bleach is usually so diluted that healthy animals would be expected to show only mild gastrointestinal upset after ingestion.”
Is Toilet Water Safe for Dogs to Drink? | It’s Me or the Dog
It’s a sound that many dog owners are familiar with: They’re maybe in the kitchen making dinner or taking a shower and then they hear loud SLURPS coming from the toilet. Then you know it’s happening again — your dog is chugging water out of the toilet. So why do dogs drink out of the toilet? Is it safe? How can you get it to stop if your dog drinks out of the toilet? Read on to learn more!