I've never had a problem with bloat, but I think a lot of that is because my dogs drink from automatic water valves like this one. They're about 2ft off the ground and the dog can only drink so fast. I also feed raw which helps. I do have automatic feeders for if I'm away, but they're raised. With that I've never had to control when or how much a dog can drink or eat after exercise, and have had great results. On top of that there's no worry about them knocking a bucket over on a hot day while I'm gone and over heating. There's also no daily watering, cleaning buckets weekly so they don't turn green. The dog's don't eat them like they do plastic buckets. No more half water half slobber buckets on hot days to clean up, and I think I paid 4 dollars each. I had to do a little plumbing because I plumbed them into my kennels but for one dog you can just put it on a hose spigot. It was also really easy to teach the dogs to use them.