Ice in dogs water?

I came across this article today and having never heard it before I was curious if anyone has ever had an issue putting ice cubes in their dogs water in the hotter months. Truthfully, my lady friend has done this for years for my dogs and I've never had anything happen to them. Curious to know if anyone has ever had issues when putting ice in their dogs water....


NO ICE WATER FOR DOGS…PLEASE READ ASAP
I had received this some time ago but was just talking to someone about how not to allow ice cold water or ice cubes in the water in extreme heat/humidity like we’ve been having or an over hot dog after running when they are panting heavily. They had never heard of this. So with that I thought it would be a good idea to post this as a warning and precaution in hopes this will be valuable advice to someone.

CROSS POSTING OK

Hello Everyone,

I am writing this in hopes that some may learn from what I just went through. We were having a good weekend till Saturday. On Saturday I showed my Baran and left the ring. He was looking good and at the top of his game. He had a chance at no
less then one of the two AOM’s.

It did not work out that way. After showing we went back to our site/setup and got the dogs in their crates to cool off. After being back about 30 min. I noticed Baran was low on water. I took a hand full of ice from my cooler and put it in his bucket with more water. We then started to get all the dogs Ex’ed and food ready for them.

I had Baran in his 48* crate in the van because this is the place he loves to be. He loves to be able to see everyone and verything. After checking him and thinking he was cooled off enough, we fed him. We walked around and one of my friends stated that Baran seamed like he was choking. I went over and checked on him. He was dry heaving and drooling. I got him out of the crate to check him over and noticed he had not eaten. He was in some distress. I checked him over from head to toe and did not notice anything. I walked him around for about a minute when I noticed that he was starting to bloat. I did everything I was taught to do in this case. I was not able to get him to burp, and we gave him Phasezime.

We rushed Baran to a vet clinic. We called ahead and let them know we were on our way. They were set up and waiting for us. They got Baran stabilized very quickly. After Baran was stable and out of distress we transported him to AVREC where he went into surgery to make sure no damage was done to any of his vital organs. I am very happy to say Baran is doing great, there was no damage to any vital organs, and he still loves his food.
In surgery the vet found that Baran’s stomach was in its normal anatomic position. We went over what had happened. When I told the vet about the ice water, he asked why I gave him ice water. I said that I have always done this. I told him my history behind this practice and his reply was, “I have been very lucky.” The ice water I gave Baran caused violent muscle spasms in his stomach which caused the bloating. Even though I figured his temperature was down enough to feed, and gave him this ice water, I was wrong. His internal temperature was still high. The vet stated that giving a dog ice to chew or ice water is a big NO, NO! There is no reason for a dog to have ice/ice water. Normal water at room temperature, or cooling with cold towels on the inner thigh, is the best way to help cool a dog. The vet explained it to me like this: If you, as a person, fall into a frozen lake what happens to your muscles? They cramp. This is the same as a dog’s stomach.

I felt the need to share this with everyone, in the hopes that some may learn from what I went through, I do not wish this on anyone. Baran is home now doing fine. So please, if you do use ice and ice water, beware of what could happen.

 

Never had issue with ice water although i would never let them eat a bag full of ice cubes I do freeze their bowl over night and put it out in the morning before I leave. The one thing I noticed is that they don't consume as much water during the summer months if the water is @ a steady 90 degrees all day but as soon as I serve some cold/ice water they go right at it like they haven't drank all day. Personally, I don't like to drink water or any other liquid at room temperature in the summer months, just not as refreshing. I can certainly see an issue if they would eat a bag of ice cubes out of the bowl which is why I rather freeze the whole bowl. It been said that cold liquids are not good for digestion but if I drink more water because it's cold then it's good enough for me. I would imagine it would matter even less for dogs because they digest food so much faster than us.

 

I saw that article too.
Any dog I've had has never shown interest in cold water or ice cubes. So I couldn't elaborate.
But I guess if it isn't broke then don't try to fix it.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

 

I haven't used ice but I do freeze some half gallon milk jugs and drop it in the buckets around noon..But hell no I never heard of this before.

 

they cool difrent. Wolfs and others don't need ice water to cool. Dogs don't need it to cool off. You don't see sides with ice water cooling down.

 

Yeah I'm not trying to cool the dogs off I just do it to keep the water from being so hot.

 

Same here. I just never heard of anything happening to a dog from drinking ice water until that article. Was curious to see if anyones ever had any problems doing it. I told my lady to stop doing it though, why take the chance.

 

never heard of this, but i do know a lot of other cultures around the world do not use ice in their drinks. I will give my girl an ice cube, she plays and kicks it around. Pretty amusing

 

Welcome back BB. I do it because they consume more water throughout the day. Kbeeping them cool is added bonus. There are better ways of cooling them down but it does cool them to a small degree so I do it.

 

It's a false article nothing wrong with ice water.

 

Looks that way. I read up some more on it. Couple things I did read on it still didnt recommend it though. Says its actually counterproductive for cooling a dog because of vasoconstriction. Seems to be nothing more than an urban legend by most of the things I seen on it when I googled it. ;-)

 

Its hard to find any truth online. It dont matter what you search for either. A web of lies indeed. :lol:

 

Yeah it's not really for cooling off the dog as much as it's for keeping the water cool. If you wanna cool off a dog spray it with the hose.

 

I use 5 gallon water buckets. I've got 2 liter bottles that I fill with water and freeze, I float them in the buckets during the daylight hours. Keeps water cool and the dogs learn to not mess with them because they notice the difference lmao

Sincerely Yours, Cajun

 

Wolves in the wild during the winter months drink really cold water from the streams.

 

[video=youtube;v_CgPsGY5Mw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_CgPsGY5Mw[/video]

 

Come on AGK.... I thought you were a vet tech...

Ice won't kill your dog. This was an unfortunate situation but the dog was a GSD, which is a breed that's highly susceptible to bloat. There are many external bloat-causing factors but ice isn't one of them. The timing of water/feed after exercise certainly is, couple that with the breed of dog, and the risk of bloat is much higher.

Ice could cause the stomach to spasm and the dog would vomit as a result.