I noticed this a long time back with my dog. I would bring him nice clean water, in a nice clean bowl and boom off he’d go to the muddy leafy puddle to drink that.
Now today I noticed my neighbor’s dog. He had a bowl of water on the porch and there he was drinking the puddle water from rain or the hose or God knows what.
Dogs?
Hell, my CHILD prefers puddles!
Maybe they don’t like the chlorine smell or aditives in city water (then again, chlorine disapates off fairly soon). Wait, scratch that since they like toilet water which is the same thing. Perhaps it’s the interesting smells or tastes from “wild” water (which toilet water might also have). It’s probly just natural for them to slurp out of whatever water source is the most handy… and not sharing the same squeemishness and high standards as us, don’t care whether it’s Evian or a cocktail of diluted battery acid and horse piss complete with oil slick.
Probably for the same reason one of my cats likes the water on the shower walls and dripping in the sink better than the water in his bowl:
Just because.
Hey…water! And it’s free!
All the dogs I’e ever seen are like this, but their absolute favourite is running water direct from the tap.
Dogs just like to check out everything that has a smell. And if they can lick up some of it too, so much the better!