So my family and I are coming for a few months and we are bringing my dog, a 22 lb Cavapoo which is a Cavalier King Charles and Poodle mix. He is obviously a US dog and my first time taking him anywhere. I figured that when I give him water that I will give him the same drinking water as us, since his stomach is not accustomed to the untreated DR water. However my question is when you wash your dog he will lick himself which means he is ingesting the untreated water. Has anyone had any issues with stomach problems due to DR water with dogs? Thanks for you patience with my ignorance on this subject.
Our Dog was purchased in the USA as a puppy, when he finally came to Santiago (DR), we noticed each time he ate he would take a dump soon after which was very soft and lacking any hardness or big chunks or anything. He never got sick, but this got me a bit worried that we got sold a sick puppy!
I took him to the vet and he explained that this was pretty common for a short period (sometimes not) for non-local dogs. He said it was overwhelmingly most common on puppies or smaller breeds than the medium to large ones. He said that it takes a while for their stomachs to build up the good bacteria count, to counter the new water denizens present in the habitat of the DR. He said that it was a good thing to boil the water a bit, let it cool down to room temperature and alternating from this water in the morning, to tap water in the rest of the day, changing back to boiled water in the nights.
After a while, the dog started to really poop nice doodles, and the hardness you come to expect as well.
it took about a month and 3 weeks for the dog to stop getting his bolied water (or better said when I had to take a long stay trip to the U.K. for biz, and nobody was willing to take the time to do it for him).
After that it always have been tap water for him, and when chance appears he will drink anything he can lick!
I found this to apply not only to dogs, but people when it comes to water in the DR!
You have to allow your stomach to build up the god bacteria, in order to enjoy the local water like a regular denizen.
I think that using bottled water is an easy choice to boiling it, but he said that even bottled water can still carry a high colony count of bacteria; unless it's processed via osmosis or boiling, common filtering will only remove certain stuff and chemicals.