I am in the market for one. I have lots of squirrels to deal with and 2 beagles to consider.
I am in Michigan and don’t have vultures and condors to deal with. I have sparrows, grackles, cardinals, bluebirds and blackbirds. I put bread out for them and the dogs are eating it. So I need a birdbath. The cat finds the birds better than TV , as he sits at the window snapping his tail back and forth.
Do I buy after a heavy one? Do they need a lot of cleaning? What material, concrete? Do I need to sink them in the ground to avoid dog tipping?
You need it heavy enough to be stable.
You don’t need more than an inch of water in it at any time. Even my domestic birds are hesitant to bathe in water much deeper than that, wild birds may be even more wary.
It does need to be kept clean. That means changing the water often enough so you don’t get things like mosquito larvae in it. Actually, if you could get one with a little fountain to keep the water agitated that would solve the mosquito issue and the birds would probably like playing in the spray. Otherwise, clean it when it looks dirty. If you don’t get a huge one, and don’t overfill it, cleaning shouldn’t be that much a hassle.
Needless to say, birds poop. Don’t put it anywhere birds pooping over the side would be a problem. Don’t put it too near the feeder(s). It needs to be out in the open so the birds can see predators and flee.
I’m confused: what does the fact that your dogs are eating the bread have to do with getting a birdbath?
Anyway, we have a low concrete one that functions primarily as a kitty water dish. It gets dumped and refilled whenever I’m outside watering plants and a couple of times a year we scrub it with a heavy-duty nylon scrub brush. It gets a little algae, but not much, and it doesn’t seem to cause anyone any problems.
A concrete birdbath is too heavy for a beagle to tip over anyway, I’d wager. The squirrels are a moot point - if you’re putting out water for birds, you’re making it available for squirrels as well. Gives your cat a new species to watch. 
The beagles will do everything they can to get at the bread. They will try to push it over. beagles are very determined.
What is the price range for a concrete one? Are there any other options that make sense.?
BirdBATH or birdFEEDER?
Is there a difference? Now I have a water bowl in the yard which the birds love to roll and bathe in. I also leave bread and seed out for them.
I want to elevate them so the dogs quit eating stuff. I have no objections to the squirrels. The beagles chase them all over the yard.
I did not picture a bird bath as just an elevated water bowl. I saw it as an elevated platform with a bathing bowl on it. Is that not possible?
BirdBATH is water, birdFEEDER is seeds or suet.
I want to provide both, so i have to get a bath and a feeder? I see the feeders on the internet that are wood crafted homes. I actually give them bread which is not the same. It would not be served by a typ. bird feeder. I have not given them suet of bought bird seed yet. Just stale bread.
Well, if you want to give them both, you’re probably going to need two objects, whether one is a bath and one a feeder, or both baths, just with water in only one and bread in the other. I’ve never seen a birdbath with a tray for food. And putting bread in the bath that you fill with water is going to necessitate a LOT of cleaning, even if the birds don’t care if their bread is wet.
They do make some feeders that are just a tray on a pole or a hanger, which you could put bread on.
You don’t have to “get” a feeder if all you’re doing is putting out old bread, in the sense of purchasing something. You basically need an elevated platform, right? You could just nail a board to a tree higher than the dogs can jump and be done with it.
You might also want some way to keep rain off the bread so you don’t wind up with a moldy, soggy mess. This is the same reason you don’t want to combine providing water with providing food - keep 'em separate.
Grackles actually dipped the bread in the dog water bowl.
No trees in the back yard. I require a platform .The online sites show 300 buck and up concrete bird baths. Do I require something that substantial.
Where? On the Sharper Image site?
Nice concrete birdbaths under $100. You may not need to make it concrete…there are some nice metal ones, also, in the $50-$100 price range.
Thrift stores, yard sales, estate sales (old grannies often have these!) and Craig’s List ought to turn up heavy concrete birdbaths as well. Another option, available pretty cheap at any big-box store, is a tall metal shepherd’s hook, often used to hang baskets of flowers. I’ve seen some that are five feet tall - is that taller than a beagle can jump to reach? They’re spiked into the ground, so it would be harder for them to knock over than a birdbath. You could use them to hang a small platform.
And yes, grackles will often fly a piece of bread or a cracker over to the birdbath in our yard to dip the pieces, making them easier to swallow.
A bird bath doesn’t need to be raised. So what if your dogs drink from it, too?
For years we had one that was nothing more than the lid off a metal trash can sitting on the ground. (We did have to dig out a slight space for the handle to sit down into so the lid was level.)
It made for easy cleaning. Just lift an edge, dumping out the water, then lay it back flat and refill. Only needed to be scrubbed two or three times a year.
As for the bird feeder, you’ve said there aren’t any trees in the appropriate area. Are there trees not too far away? Because you can just string up a cable from a hook screwed in near your back door and off to a more distant tree, then you can hang any kind of birdfeeders you like off of that.
I’m thinking the open-wire-mesh ones they sell as suet feeders would do fine holding bread.
For those birds that want to eat off a flat surface you need to get some sort of tray-ish thing with a shallow lip – again, I bet a trash can lid would work fine – and suspend it with three (or more) wires/chains going up to the horizontal wire.
BTW, if you do this, put a pair of clothespins on either side of the ‘hooks’ on the wire. Otherwise all the feeders will slide down the wire to the low end or get blow into each other or so forth.
If you are in Michigan, then you need to get a heater. I have one that works fine, about 20 bucks, easily googleable. One problem is that the warm water evaporates very quickly when it’s zero degrees outside, so you have to be on the ball about refilling it.
I have a heated birdbath and on average add half a gallon of water to it every day.
I have it mounted on the railing next to the front door, so all I have to do is open a bedroom window and I can fill it from inside the house, much better than having to go outside and fill it. Usually 2 of those full size juice jugs will filll it up every day, if I forgot it goes dry in a hurry.