Dog with a drinking problem
Discussion
We have a 6 month old Border Collie who is generally well behaved but has an issue with drinking water... He never stops!
Some days he will take a big drink, then 10 minutes later cry to go out (and he'll do a huge pee outside), then as soon as he walks in the house it's straight up to the water bowl for another big drink, and 10 minutes later cries, etc...
It's not unusual to take him out for a pee five times an hour during the day. He gets crated when he's left alone (and overnight) without access to water so he doesn't have any problems in the crate... But it took a LONG time to toilet train him. At 4 months old he was still peeing in his crate (sometimes probably in his sleep, because it was in his bed and all over his fur) but that seems to have stopped now.
He has been to the vet and had a blood test (liver/kidneys/calcium/diabetes - all OK).
We measured his water intake the other day - it was around 2 litres in one day (and it was an average day - there are days he drinks more). He is quite skinny, I think around 12kg at the moment - I've done some Googling and 2 litres seems very excessive. Our other dog is double his weight and drinks less than half that amount.
We are really stumped and could use some ideas.
Some days he will take a big drink, then 10 minutes later cry to go out (and he'll do a huge pee outside), then as soon as he walks in the house it's straight up to the water bowl for another big drink, and 10 minutes later cries, etc...
It's not unusual to take him out for a pee five times an hour during the day. He gets crated when he's left alone (and overnight) without access to water so he doesn't have any problems in the crate... But it took a LONG time to toilet train him. At 4 months old he was still peeing in his crate (sometimes probably in his sleep, because it was in his bed and all over his fur) but that seems to have stopped now.
He has been to the vet and had a blood test (liver/kidneys/calcium/diabetes - all OK).
We measured his water intake the other day - it was around 2 litres in one day (and it was an average day - there are days he drinks more). He is quite skinny, I think around 12kg at the moment - I've done some Googling and 2 litres seems very excessive. Our other dog is double his weight and drinks less than half that amount.
We are really stumped and could use some ideas.
Does sound excessive, have your vets done a water deprivation test to rule out diabetes insipid (different to diabetes millions) it is not a common one and these dogs drink pints and pints and pints but could be good to make sure.
Finally collies are notorious for picking up OCD behaviours, this may need exploring if there is no health issues. We had a boxer on our books where we found it's drinking was psychological (linked to his over bonding with his owner!!)
Finally collies are notorious for picking up OCD behaviours, this may need exploring if there is no health issues. We had a boxer on our books where we found it's drinking was psychological (linked to his over bonding with his owner!!)
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