Can a feeding mat catch spilled water effectively?

The lip around a bordered mat acts like a shallow tray, catching drips that run down a dog's chin and water that sloshes over the bowl's edge when a large dog drinks quickly. Most bordered mats hold enough to manage a single spill event, but they are not designed to contain a bowl being knocked over entirely.

A flat rubber backed mat mainly stops the bowl sliding across tile or hardwood and gives you one surface to wipe instead of scrubbing the floor, but water still runs off the edge onto the surrounding floor within a few seconds. If your main problem is puddles rather than a sliding bowl, a bordered mat is the better fit.

Dogs with loose jowls, such as many hounds and mastiff type breeds, lose noticeably more water from the mouth after drinking than tighter lipped breeds, so a deeper border of around 1.5 cm (0.6 in) helps more for them. A dog that barely spills at all may not need a mat beyond basic floor protection.

Putting the mat on a flat, level section of floor stops water pooling unevenly to one side of the border, which is often what causes an otherwise adequate mat to overflow on one edge only. Emptying pooled water from the mat's channel once a day, rather than letting it evaporate slowly, keeps the border ready to catch the next spill.