Crazy Dog.

[sheepdog 10]

Now here's one even I am having trouble figuring out. I have a dog with a very strange fettish. New Missouri regulations state that a dog must have constant access to water, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. My inspector told me I coudn't even legally take the water pan out to clean it and put it right back. How stupid is that? I have to put in a clean pan and fill it and then take the other pan out to clean. Anyway, I've had a running battle with some of my dogs and their bad habits of playing in their water, or playing with their water pans and dumping their water out. Most of the dogs are pretty good, but I have a few that are a real challenge to keep in water. I fooled one by putting a brick that had one side broken off so I could put one edge of it in the water pan to keep the dog from dragging it off and dumping it, now it's too heavy for her to move and the drag of the block that is not in the pan makes it almost impossible to drag away. But one dog really blew my mind. Big dog, Giant Schnauzer to be exact, just insisted on getting her front feet in her water pan and digging out every drop of water. I made a special trip to town just to get her a new, deeper water tub, figuring that if it was a bigger pan she couldn't dig it out. Wrong. I got her a nice big pretty metal tub, put in it for her and filled it up. Instantly her feet went to flying and the water was gone in less than a minute. So I filled it up again, and right back after it she went, and promptly emptyied it again. I thought surely after a third fill up she would get tired of the game, but I was wrong again. By this time I was getting pretty aggravated, and it was well past lunch time so in total frustration I headed for the house to get a bite to eat. Checked my email too while I was at it, and then later after the hired help had gone home I headed back down to resume the dog fight over the water pan. When I went to look, I was really pissed off to see that my pretty new water tub was gone, and the dog had one of the old black rubber tubs that the inspectors had *BLEEP*ed about because the dogs had chewed on the edges a little bit. Luckily the help was already gone because I was cussing them for putting the old tub in there, since I would get wrote up for it being chewed just as easily as I would for the dog not having water. While I was raving over that, something suddenly dawned on me. The old tub still had water in it. Yes. Water. In the pen with this lunatic of a dog. I watched it the rest of the afternoon, and then checked first thing the next morning and it still had water in it. I asked the hired man what made him but the old tub back in and he just said it was an idea that he had. I still can't for the life of me figure out why the dog would dig the water out of the metal tub and not the black one. I did read in the pet thread about how some folks were feeding their dog on a silver dish and it barked at it's reflection, but these metal pans are shiny, but don't really have a reflective coating on them so I don't think that's it in this case. Luckily, I had another black rubber tub I was using for some other dogs, that was still in good shape, so they got the pretty new shiny tub and the trouble maker got their black rubber tub. And she has had water ever since. Go figure. For the life of me I can't figure it out.