You have probably seen the banner at the very top of this page. That picture is Kali, my daughter Theresa’s dog, poking her head up next two some glasses of fresh Multipure water. Kali doesn’t drink out of glasses, but she does get Multipure water in her dog bowl. To tell you the truth, her first choice is not Multipure, but unfiltered puddle water, the muddier the better. What can I say, she’s a natural kind of girl. A woodsy bird-dog type.
I know many of you have pets. What do they drink? Tap, filtered, bottled? Please comment and share your reasoning on this. Some pets (dogs, cats, rabbits, etc) drink water, others (turtles, fish) live in it. What I do know from visiting thousands of homes to talk about the Multipure option is that for lots of people, their pets are a primary emotional relationship. That’s right. Pets come a close second only to children when it to providing healthy food and water. If you are a person who likes filtered water for your own health, why would you want anything else for your pets? Dogs and cats and a few others are mammals just like us. Not to be a mammal chauvinist; we also have fish (who live in water) , reptiles and amphibious pets, too!
Let me toss out a few points that you may not have thought about:
1. Dogs (and cats) don’t drink coffee. They don’t drink coke. The don’t drink milk. They ONLY drink water. Since it is their only liquid, perhaps they are even more dependent on it than we humans are.
2. Many of our pets eat dry food. Therefore, they need even more water per ounce of food than we do!
3. Since most dogs and pets drink from a bowl a little at a time, that water has a chance to sit. That is good news and bad news… The good news is that when water sits, if it is tap water much of the chlorine can evaporate. Studies have shown that while chlorine byproducts in water can cause bladder cancer in humans, since much of it evaporates in dog bowls, the same is not true in dogs.
The bad news is that when water sits too long it is not fresh tasting and bacteria and algae can grow.
4. We humans have to be extremely conscientious in order to get enough water and prevent dehydration. I think pets are much more instinctively self-regulated. If good fresh water is available, they will hydrate fine.
5. Fish are especially sensitive to impurities in their water, which makes perfect sense. For example, the chlorine and now often ammonia (chloramines) in tap water are known to be harmful to them. Multipure filters out chlorine and chloramines.
When a person asks me how often they need to change their Multipure filter, I usually say it depends how many people are using it. I then ask if they have a dog, and if the answer is yes, I count the dog as another person, since the dog drinks, too! For a typical 4 mammal family, we recommend once a year filter changes. Sometimes I adjust it accordingly if there are more or less than 4, dogs included.