Stop Water Bowl Digging

It is easier to change your method of giving your puppy water than to train him not to play in it.  Water play is fun and in the summer getting wet makes him cooler.  It is a self-rewarding behavior that can be hard to stop.  I suggest doing away with water bowls all together and use buckets instead.  We attach ours to crates with either a clip or a carabiner.  When we have very young puppies, we attach them with 2 clips, one on each side to give it greater stability.  The way we have them attached, puppies can’t get into them.  Dogs cannot tip them over.  However, we do have the occasional puppy who will enjoy sticking his paws in the water without tipping it over.  We simply raise the level until it is too difficult to be worth the effort to get paws in.  Once the habit is gone, we lower the bucket back to ground level.  We use stainless steel buckets between a quart and a gallon in size.