Drinkwell Big-Dog Pet Fountain

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Sale Price: $56.28
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I have been using the fountain for a few weeks now.

It holds 2.5 gallons of water, I use bottled water to fill it because that's what we drink, so I'm not worried about the filter replacement. In fact.. I don't think the filter is all that useful or purposeful. (A regular charcoal filter that the water flows around) honestly.. I don't think I'll every buy a replacement.. using bottled water as I said I feel it's not really necessary!

Once a week I clean it out.. I did not buy the cleaning kit, again doesn't seem necessary. I use the hose sprayer on my small kitchen sink to turn it upside down in and spray every crack & crevice with our hottest tap water setting for a few minutes. Works great, no scrubbing necessary.

The flow rate adjustment is great too.. fast flow or slow.. .the slow setting makes the least water trickling sound, we don't even hear it, and the fast is like any soothing home water fountain.

2.5 gallons lasts our pack of 2 medium 1 large dogs, and 2 housecats about 1 week.. I may add a little to the bowl before the week is over now that its summer but not much. I let it run down a bit low and then clean it.

I would recommend buying it, and may buy another for our covered outside area as well.

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We have 3 Scottish Terriers and they LOVE this thing! Scotties love fresh, running water to drink, but don't like getting water in their face. With this fountain, they get the fresh, filtered water they like, without having to worry about it getting in their face. The filter also helps clean out the debris they bring in on their beards! The large reservoir means I am not constantly refilling their water dish. I would highly recommend this product.

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I've been very pleased with this fountain. I placed it beside my "Catit" cat fountain, which needs refilling less often now-I'm assuming because my big dog prefers the Big Dog fountain. My cats also like it, sometimes to drink from, sometimes just to watch. I like that it holds a lot of water. It's a bit noisy, I hear the water running all the time, that might bother some.

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We've had this thing about a week now. It's definitely got our older dog drinking more water, which is why we got it.

It's not quite as great as I hoped, though. For one thing, I don't see why they didn't make the reservoir larger. We still have to fill the thing up once a day or so (though we'd have to do this at least as often with our old water bowl). They could have easily doubled the size of the water reservoir without making it awkwardly large.

For another thing, the water tastes good to our dogs, but it looks kind of unappealing. I somehow hoped that since the water was pumped through a filter continuously, it would be crystal clear. It's free of hair, but it has an enormous floating island of drool on it. The problem is that the water intake for the recirculation is on the bottom of the basin, but since drool floats on the surface, it just builds up until you skim it off or clean the thing out. I'm sure they could have designed it so that some of the water intake came from the water surface. But like I said, the dogs don't mind. The water is much less gross than our water bowl would get (besides the floating drool island).

The third thing about it that could be better is that it's not super quiet, even on the slowest setting. It's not that bad though; we have it in the kitchen, and we never turn the thing off. It's a bit of white noise that doesn't interfere with watching TV in the living room or anything. But if you're concerned about noise, you should be aware it'll make some.

Despite these quibbles, I still give it 4 stars. It gets our dog drinking more water, which is good for him.

One last thing -the instruction manual makes a big deal of cleaning out its various parts weekly. I think buying the brush kit (and some extra filters) to go with it is a good idea, instead of having to go back and have a second set of things shipped to you the next week (if you don't have a pet store local that sells the extras for this thing).

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Though this isn't a must have item by any means, we do have a big Golden Retriever (we actually own two Goldens) that has always preferred drinking from a stream of running water (like a faucet or the water pouring from a bottle, etc.) and we do spoil our dogs sometimes... So out of curiosity I ordered this thing. Well when it arrived, I disassembled it and washed everything and then re-assembled... I figured this would be good practice and allowed me to evaluate the design and fit. Filled it with water and turned it on... HUMMMMMM!!! ...LOUD!!! LOUD!!! LOUD!!! this thing hummed sooo loud it could be heard two rooms away and even faintly from another floor. It was Friday evening so I had the weekend to play around with the thing. Everything I tried did nothing to quiet the loud humming of the little aquarium pump motor. I figured this canNOT possibly be right... they've probably sold tens of thousands of these things by now and no way would they have been able to do that if they all sounded this loud. So first thing on Monday I called the seller, who immediately agreed with me that something was not right, it should be very quiet. I was given the phone number of the manufacturer's customer service. After a nice conversation in which they also agreed something was not right with my unit, they sent me out a new motor/impeller at no charge. It took a week and a day to get to me. After I installed the new motor/impellor... TADA!!! no more hum. This thing is very quiet... now all I hear anymore is the gentle trickling of the water stream, hooray! ...its actually a kinda relaxing sound. The moral of the story here is... its not suppose to be loud and if you have a unit that is, just complain and ask for a new motor/impeller.

Bottomline is this is a great product... excellent design and fit. And this Big Dog fountain really is big and holds a lot of water... enough for days without having to refill it. One trick to keeping it cleaner longer is we have a separate SS water bowl next to the food dishes at dinner time so they drink out of that bowl immediately following dinner, that way all the food/kibble junk falls into the stainless bowl which we pick up soon after dinner and dump out. This keeps the Big Dog fountain from fouling up and so we don't need to wash it very often... in fact, we only wash it once every couple of weeks.

I had to rate it at only 4 stars because of the original motor's noise... and thus all totaled, it did take more than a week to get it working properly as it should have... and that inconvenience alone has got to cost it a star rating.