Have we figured it out?????

The first jug is $0.60 and a refill is $0.39.

 
Ooooh, that's very reasonable.  I may start trying that out this weekend.  Heck, I've tried everything else, so why not give it a shot, right?
 
 

That's what I thought.  It sure couldn't hurt and it far less expensive than all of the creams and medications and ointments I tried.
 
Good luck and let me know how it goes.

That's really interesting. We were advised by a holistic vet to always use bottled water for the dogs as it may reduce the risk of cancer.
 
We bought one of the ones that go under the sink. It works out to about 10 cents a gallon and it has actually saved money because we buy a lot less bottled water for the humans.

Well, Detroit and Milwaukee weather are pretty much the same. I thought back to the weekend we were home and the day we came back and the weather was equal in both (around 40's). I also thought back to when we took him to the kennel back in August for 5 days. The kennel had well water so we bought jugs of water from the store. When we picked him up they said he stopped itching but two days after we brought him home it started back up again so I just attributed it to a coincidence. Now, maybe it wasn't and we wasted three months messing around when we had the answer back then.

 
  It really does sound like it was the water. We have a Pur water filter on our faucet and I use that for Jessie's drinking water and ours; is bottled water better?

ORIGINAL: jessies_mom

It really does sound like it was the water. We have a Pur water filter on our faucet and I use that for Jessie's drinking water and ours; is bottled water better?

 
The stuff from the grocery store is supplied by [linkhttp://www.glacierwater.com]www.glacierwater.com[/link].  The label says:
 
"Drinking Water Prepared by Reverse Osmosis"  If all it is is purified drinking water (which is sounds like) the PUR water filter you have will probably provide the same thing.
 
At the dollar store, I also picked up a couple of gallon jugs Crystal Geyser and have used those too.  (I forgot to get water at the grocery store and didn't feel like going back).  That says Natural Alpine Spring Water.

I have to make DH read this thread - he thought I was crazy with the bottled water thing!  We have well water, and from day one I had insisted on giving the dogs bottled water to help prevent tear staining (same as you, nothing fancy - about 60 cents per gallon or so).  Well, we stopped buying it a couple of months ago because the dogs were sneaking into the "cat room" and drinking their water and going downstairs and drinking my foster dog's water anyway, which was the same well water we drink.  I did not make the connection until reading your post, but Sammy has developed several allergy symptoms in the past couple months.  He has like a brownish coloring inside of his thigh (which I've read can be a sign of allergies when there are no fleas present), he bites his feet, and of course the weeping eyes have always been an issue, but they got severe for a couple of weeks.  I even changed their food a couple of weeks ago for fear that Sammy had developed a food allergy!  It may have been the WATER!  I should know soon because due to the tear stains on both dogs, I have started giving both cats AND dogs bottled water so that it won't matter who drinks whos!  I wonder how long it would take to see a difference - Thanks for the post!  I hope I have the answer now too!

In hope changing back helps; good luck.