We loved our dog, Gus. Like most dogs, he was definitely a beloved family member. He was a Vizsla (also called Hungarian Pointer).
And like most dogs who have experienced it, Gus loved Willard Water. He drank it every day, from the time we got him as a 6-week-old puppy.
Many people have told us over the years that their pets would refuse to drink ordinary water, after they had been introduced to Willard Water.
I admit I thought that was somewhat extreme, but we heard it from enough people I certainly didn’t disbelieve it... it just seemed really amazing to me somehow. It was as if a very small part of me just couldn’t believe that, even though I didn’t think for an instant that any of the people who’d told us that weren’t telling us the truth, but maybe their dogs weren't as picky as they seemed to their owners or something.
But Gus made a believer of me.
One night Gus and my wife, Kolleen, and I were in the family room watching television. Gus’s family room water dish was empty (he always had one there and one in the kitchen). Gus let me know it was empty and that he wanted it filled by picking it up with his teeth, throwing it in the air, and letting it clatter to the wood floor, as he stared at me.
His jug of Willard Water was in the kitchen. But the bathroom was even closer. I was tired. Kolleen was tired. I decided it wouldn't hurt him just once to drink regular plain water. So I filled his dish from the faucet in the bathroom sink, which is the same water that comes out of our kitchen faucet—all of which came from our well, and had NO chlorine, or other chemicals added to it.
Gus was very excited when I came back with his filled water dish — leaping up and down and racing to satisfy his thirst as soon as I’d set the dish back down on the floor.
He dropped his head down to begin guzzling, stopped abruptly (as if putting on his brakes!) and jerked himself away. He then approached his dish again, cautiously, and then stopped, and turned away and looked at Kolleen and me with an expression of “what did I ever do to deserve this?” and walked away from his water dish in disgust.
“Okay, Mr. Connoisseur, I’ll get you your Willard's Water!” I huffed, as I dragged my tired bones to the kitchen to get his water. I took his water dish with me, so he didn’t see how I filled it, and filled it from his jug of Willard Water.
His jug contained the same tap water that came from the bathroom sink, but with two capsful (the cap size from the 8-oz Willard Water bottle) of Willard Water concentrate added to it. That makes it only 2/5 as “strong” a dilution of as the ounce-to-a-gallon mixture that we make for ourselves, or that any Willard Water user makes up for themselves.
I came back to the family room with his dish and set it on the floor. He looked at me with a questioning look on his face, before approaching it like he was wondering if I was still trying to pull some sort of a fast one on him!
He got to his dish, put his head down slowly... then lapped it up enthusiastically.
At that moment, I really believed in my own soul, that dogs can tell the difference between Willard Water and regular water. Nothing like seeing something with your own eyes to convince you!
Not that I’ve ever had any doubts, as I said, about Willard's Water’s benefits for pets. Our dogs and cats have drank nothing but Willard Water for nearly 40 years by now, and they’ve all lived very long and extremely healthy lives.
When our kids were young, we got 4 gerbils who lived in an empty aquarium and spent their days chewing up cardboard cores of toilet paper and paper towel rolls to make nesting material.
They drank nothing but Willard's Water and lived from 3 to 4 years, a couple even longer as I recall, which I believe is a long life for a gerbil. You can bet our pets will always have WW!
Gus "went home" in 2011, and we still miss him, as we do all the pets we've had to say good-bye to over the years, but we've never forgotten the lesson he taught us about "pulling a switch on him and trying to pass regular water off as Willard's Water"... and he made it clear to us that all the people who had told us that their dogs or cats or horses didn't want regular water after they'd had Willard's Water were telling us exactly how it was. God Bless You, Gus.