Dog drinking water instinct

Factual Questions
1

I’ve noticed that my dogs prefer to drink running water. They have a big bowl of fresh water that I keep filled and that I wash every other day, yet when I turn on the outside spigot they come a runnin to get a drink whether they seem thirsty or not. When I run the sink to brush my teeth my big dog jumps up and drinks out of the sink. When I pour more water into the dog bowl (from a pitcher) they also come to drink and they stop when I stop pouring.

So, is there perhaps an instinctual preference for dogs to drink running water rather than stagnant water? Maybe this evolved because in nature running water tends to be fresher than stagnant water. Or are my dogs just wierd?

2

My dog is the opposite, she will always wait for the water to stop running to grab a drink out of the bowl. This is mostly at the dog park, when I refill the communal bowl. She’ll just watch and wait, then drink.

There are always a few dogs at the park that go for the running water. Just differences in dogs.

3

Anecdotal Evidence:
Normally when bailing hay I’d drink from one of the many local creeks but there were none around so I was forced to draw from a well. I had a bad feeling before drinking the water. A worse feeling after pulling the slug out of the well bucket before drinking. That was nothing compared to how bad I was feeling for the next three days.

Based on my own gut feeling :wink: and the assumtion that running water would have less harmful bacteria than running water then, yes.