Toilet Bowl Cocktail

If a TV family has a dog, there is a good chance Fido or Rover has been caught drinking from the toilet. Even when the family provides him with a full bowl of water, somehow it tastes better coming from a place where people pee and do other unpleasant things. This is usually followed by someone in the family yelling for them to knock it off.

This is very much based in truth. Dogs are said to prefer the toilet because to them, the water is fresher and cleaner than whatever is sitting in their bowl. Sometimes cats even do this, though it's rarer.

Examples of dogs drinking from the toilet can be found in:

Comics

• Odie drinks from the toilet in several Garfield strips. One even has him making Garfield watch a toilet-bowl-drinking competition with him.

Film

• Happens twice in the fourth Beethoven movie: at the beginning, the titular dog drinks from the toilet and gets the seat caught around his neck. Later, Charles tries to goad another dog into misbehaving by doing it himself.
• In Uncle Buck, the titular character lets the family's dog drink from the toilet before learning that the blue in the water is toilet cleaner. When he tells his sister-in-law Cindy about how that must be why the dog's urine is oddly colored, Cindy is visibly disturbed.
• In the 2002 Scooby-Doo movie, Shaggy and Scooby are trapped on a wall of plastic food and Scooby doesn't like it. Shaggy says "What do you care? You drink out of the toilet!" Scooby's response? "So do you."
• A dog is seen drinking out of the toilet in The Secret Life of Pets.
• Inverted in Bolt, where Mittens the cat regularly drinks from the toilet and Bolt (a dog) is horrified and disgusted at the very idea.
• The trailer for My Dog Skip features a scene of the titular dog drinking from a toilet.

Live-Action TV

• In one episode of Family Matters, the kids sneak a dog into the house and talk Harriet into helping them hide him from Carl. At one point, Eddie can be heard yelling for the pooch to stop drinking from the toilet. Harriet quickly pretends he's talking to youngest sister Judy, who "hasn't been the same since she braided her hair too tight."
• Comet on Full House regularly does this, according to Michelle. Kimmy's dog Coco can apparently drink from the toilet using a straw.
  • Another episode has the family throw Comet a birthday party, and one of the guests can't be found when it's time for them to go home. Joey tries to think of where he'd go if he were a dog, and immediately comes up with "drinking water out of the toilet."
• Caroline from Caroline in The City once tells a dog "don't judge me, you drink from the toilet."

Western Animation

• Ren is seen drinking from a toilet in The Ren and Stimpy Show's opening sequence.
  • Ditto Tuff Puppy's protagonist.
• Spunky does this several times in Rocko's Modern Life, though he's more likely to drink his own slobber. One gimmicky dog water dish in the episode "Who Gives a Buck" is actually shaped like a toilet and called "His Master's Bowl".
• In an episode of The Simpsons, Mr. Burns offers to adopt all 25 of Santa's Little Helper's puppies, citing that they'd enjoy drinking from his many toilets.
• Spike drinks from the toilet in the unaired Rugrats pilot, and the babies' assumption that it's a dog bowl suggests he does this regularly.
• One episode of The Fairly OddParents! has Timmy switch bodies with Vicky's dog. The dog uses Timmy's body to drink from the school toilet, leading A.J. and Chester to pressure Francis into doing the same to prove he's as tough as "Timmy."
• Arnold's pet pig, Abner, on Hey Arnold! is known to do this according to the episode "Abner Come Home."

Real Life

• YouTube celebrity Cory Williams's cat Sparta often drank from the toilet when he was a kitten. His new kitten, Gadget, took up the habit almost immediately after they brought him home.