Frozen Toppls and a House Full of Guest Dogs

Six guest dogs came through this house last July, and the reason my tile kitchen floor survived it is that I own two West Paw Toppls and I keep one of them in the freezer.

I have looked after other people's dogs in my own home in Tehachapi, California, for nine years now. Usually two or three at a time, plus Pepper, my six year old cattle dog mix. She is 42 pounds of hard chewer who gets bored fast and shreds anything flimsy. When the walks are done and dinner is still an hour off, that is when a house full of dogs decides to test the furniture.

I tried a lot of things before the Toppl. Some worked for Pepper and not for the guests, some the other way round. What I wanted was one thing I could prepare the night before, hand out on the covered back porch, and not think about again until everybody was finished.

The West Paw Toppl is a treat dispensing puzzle toy. Mine measure about seven by five and a half by three inches and weigh just over four ounces, so it is light enough to carry out to the porch with a dog weaving around each leg. It is made of Zogoflex, it is BPA free and non toxic, and it is top rack dishwasher safe. It is also unscented, which sounds like nothing until you have washed a rubber toy that held last week's wet food.

I bought the first one a year ago, on the recommendation of another boarder, on the first properly hot afternoon of that summer. I filled it with kibble and plain yogurt, stood it in the freezer overnight, and gave it to a young lab staying the week. He worked at it for almost half an hour in the shade of the porch. I went back inside and sat down. That was the whole test, and it passed.

Here is the entire routine. After the five o'clock dinner I pack both toys with kibble and a spoon of plain yogurt, stand them in the freezer, and go read. The next afternoon I carry one out to the porch, hand it over, and carry the empty one back to the sink. That is it. Nine years of this has taught me that the toys which survive my house are the ones that ask almost nothing of me, and this is one of those.

Half an hour of quiet on the porch, from a toy I filled the night before and put in the top rack of the dishwasher afterwards.

Pepper gets hers only with me in the room. The small size is snug for a 42 pound cattle dog, and she is the reason I do not set any food toy down and walk away. In this house every food toy goes to a dog in a separate spot, one dog per toy, and no dog is left alone with one. That rule has nothing to do with the Toppl and everything to do with a house that has three dogs in it on a Tuesday.

The guest dogs are where it earns its keep. A guest beagle who arrives nervous on a Friday will settle on a towel with a frozen Toppl in front of her instead of pacing the hallway. A young lab staying the week gets his on the porch after the afternoon walk. Small and medium dogs take to it easily. If your dog is a big one, order the larger size, because the small is not built for a heavy jaw.

It is not indestructible and it is not a chew toy. Mine have tooth marks on the rim from Pepper and no missing chunks after a year of use, but I would not hand one to a dog who works through rubber for sport. The other thing I will say plainly is that the freezer is the point. An unfilled Toppl is a puzzle a clever dog solves in four minutes. A frozen one lasts about twenty five.

Before the Toppl I kept red KONG Classics for the guest dogs, and the narrow opening was slow to fill and a nuisance to clean with a bottle brush. The last of them left the house the month the first Toppl arrived. I still keep KONG Extremes for Pepper at seven in the evening, because that is a different job and a different toy. One is a chew. The other is a meal that takes a while.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you are standing in my kitchen with a mug in your hand, here is what I would say. Buy two, not one, because the whole thing only works if the second one is already frozen when the first comes out of the dishwasher. Fill it the night before, not at four in the afternoon when the dogs are already circling. Use plain yogurt, canned pumpkin or kibble, and read the label on your peanut butter for xylitol before you put a spoon in it. Give it on a towel on a hard floor, or outside on the porch, because a frozen food toy melts as it goes. Pick it up the moment it is empty, because a bored dog will eventually decide that the empty toy is a chew toy.

None of this replaced the walks. Pepper still needs both of them, mid morning and late afternoon, and a frozen Toppl is not exercise and it is not training. It is twenty five minutes of quiet in a day that otherwise has none, and in a house with guest dogs in it, that is worth having.