Starting on July 5, our dog began having loose stools. She acted fine otherwise, so I tried the usual methods of stool firming like boiled chicken and rice and spoons full of canned pumpkin. It worked a little, but by the 10th, it was watery diarrhea, so I took her to the vet. They did a fecal (no parasites) so assumed it was something bacterial most likely and sent me home with a bottle of Flagyl. I noticed that after I gave her the first dose, she did not touch her water for probably 18 hours and she seems almost freaked out to go near her water bowl. I have tried using filtered water, and have used 3 different bowls now, and she wants nothing to do with it. If I put chicken broth mixed with water in one of our cereal bowls, she will drink that, and I've been putting a pretty decent amount of water in with her food twice a day, so that she won't dehydrate. I even had the water softener company come out and check the system because I wondered if the salt mixture was coming through too strongly and the taste bothered her.
Does anyone have any ideas why she would be refusing to drink plain water? She was doing fine with it up until I gave the flagyl, so I wondered if it was leaving her with a weird taste in her mouth and she was associating it with her water bowl? She is acting fine now, and her poop is almost entirely back to normal. I will just keep tricking her into getting adequate water, and will try whatever it takes to get her to actually drink from the bowl....