West Paw Toppl Review: Months of Daily Use in a House Full of Dogs

A year ago I bought two West Paw Toppl toys for one reason. A beagle staying the week could empty a bowl of kibble in under a minute and then stand in my kitchen giving me a look. I have looked after other people's dogs in my own home in Tehachapi, California for nine years, and I thought I had already found every treat toy worth the cupboard space. This one surprised me, and it surprised me for a boring reason that turned out to matter more than any clever feature.

Short version first. The West Paw Toppl is the reason I finally stopped keeping red rubber classics around for guest dogs. It fills in seconds, it freezes solid, it goes on the top rack of the dishwasher, and a frozen meal inside it keeps an ordinary dog working for about 25 minutes on my back porch. My one real complaint is about the size I ordered, not about the toy. I will get to that, and I will be specific about it, because it is the thing most likely to make you unhappy with an order.

How I've Used It

I bought the first one a year ago and the second about a month later. A freezer toy only works if there is always one frozen and waiting, and one toy cannot keep up with a daily habit. I own two Smalls and I would own three if my freezer had the room.

The routine has not changed in twelve months. Some time after the midday walk, I pack kibble into the toy, spoon plain yogurt over the top, tap it level, and stand it upright in the freezer for the next day. Around three in the afternoon I carry it out to the covered back porch and hand it to one dog at a time, in separate spots, with me out there. That last part is not negotiable in this house. No dog is left alone with any toy here, and that was true long before this one arrived.

A frozen one takes Pepper, my own six year old cattle dog mix, about 25 minutes. She is 42 pounds and a hard chewer, and she is the fastest I have. A guest dog usually takes a little longer at the start and a lot less once they have worked out that the food is in there. The first hot afternoon I handed one out, three dogs went quiet at the same time. I remember it because it almost never happens.

For the record, the Small measures 7.09 by 5.51 by 3.15 inches and weighs 4.23 ounces. That is light enough for a dog to pick up and carry across a porch without dropping it, which several of my guests do. It is also small enough to fit on a crowded freezer shelf, which is more than I can say for some of the bowls I have tried.

What It Does That a Plain Bowl Does Nothing For

A bowl is a two second event. A dog puts its head down, the food is gone, and then the dog is standing in front of you asking what happens next. The Toppl turns the same food into a job. The kibble is packed inside, the yogurt freezes around it, and the dog has to work at it with tongue and paws to get anything out at all.

That is worth the most to me with the fast eaters. I have had guest dogs who empty a bowl before I have put the scoop down and then spend the next hour looking for something to get into. A frozen Toppl does more for that hour than anything else in my cupboard, and it does it without me standing over anybody.

It also earns its place on the days when there are three dogs in the house and only one can be out on the porch at a time. The dog inside with a frozen Toppl is not standing at the door complaining. It is lying on the tile working at something, and when I look up twenty minutes later it is still working at it. That is the entire value of a food toy as far as I am concerned.

West Paw calls this an interactive puzzle toy. I would call it a licking and working toy before I would call it a puzzle. There are no sliders to nose open and no lids to flip, so there is nothing for a dog to learn and nothing for a dog to get frustrated with. The effort is all in getting frozen food out of a tight space, which is a slow, quiet kind of effort. On a 95 degree afternoon in Tehachapi, slow and quiet is exactly what I am buying.

One thing I will not tell you. I am not going to say it fixes a dog who gets upset when you leave, and I am not going to say it cures boredom for good. In my house it fills a gap in the afternoon. Pepper still gets both walks. She still chews in the evening. This is a toy that buys a stretch of quiet, and a stretch of quiet is worth paying for. It is not a substitute for anything.

The Size Question, and Why I Bought Two Smalls

Here is the honest part, and it is the part I would want someone to tell me. I bought the Small, and I bought it while thinking about guest dogs, because most of what comes through my door is small to medium. That was the right choice for the house and a slightly wrong choice for Pepper. At 42 pounds with a serious chew habit, the Small is a snug fit for her. She can empty one in less time than any other dog here, and she only gets it while I am sitting out there with her.

If your dog looks anything like mine, size up. I would rather say that plainly than have you copy my order and be disappointed by how quickly it is over. The toy itself has been fine with her. It is capacity that is the limit, not toughness.

The two Smalls have been right for a young lab staying the week, for a pair of guest beagles, and for a terrier mix who comes every second Tuesday. If your house is as busy as mine, two Smalls make more sense than one large one, because you can have one frozen while the other is out. If you have one big dog and nothing else, buy for that dog and ignore me.

The Freezer Routine That Actually Works

Nobody tells you that the filling routine matters more than the toy. I learned it the slow way. Kibble goes in first, dry, and gets tapped down. Then a spoon of plain yogurt over the top to seal it. I use plain yogurt and canned pumpkin and nothing else, and the peanut butter in this house is always the kind with no xylitol in it. Then it stands upright on a small tray in the freezer overnight.

My first attempts were too full. I packed one to the brim, put it in on its side, and ended up with frozen yogurt on a shelf. Now I level it off and stand it up, and I have not had a spill in months. If you take one thing from this review, take that one.

Timing is the other half of it. At three in the afternoon the toy comes out of the freezer and sits on the porch rail for a few minutes while I get the dogs settled. Any longer than that and it starts to give too easily, and the whole thing is over in eight minutes. Frozen hard is the point. Soft is a snack.

Cleaning and Durability After a Year of Daily Use

Top rack of the dishwasher. That single fact is why this toy is still in my rotation and several others are not. When a treat toy takes ten minutes of scrubbing with a bottle brush, I stop reaching for it, and a toy I do not reach for is a toy taking up space in a cupboard I need. These go in with the dinner plates and come out clean, and I have stopped thinking about it.

The material is Zogoflex, which West Paw describes as tough, BPA free, non toxic, and safe on the top rack. I am not a materials person and I am not going to pretend to be one. What I can tell you is what I see after twelve months of near daily use. Both are intact. There are no chunks missing, no rough patches, and nothing sharp anywhere a dog's tongue goes. There are tooth marks along the rim, and that is all.

I still pick them up the moment a dog is finished. That is not a criticism of the toy. It is the rule for everything in this house, and I have applied it for nine years. The dog who has finished a frozen Toppl is a dog looking for the next thing, and I would rather the next thing be a walk than the toy itself.

A small note on the freezer. Two of these take up less room than a bag of frozen peas, which matters in a house where the freezer is also holding pumpkin and yogurt for the next round. If you are short on space, two Smalls are easier to store than one larger toy.

What I Compared It To

For three years before this, I kept red rubber classics for guest dogs. They worked. They were also slow to fill because the opening is narrow, and slow to clean for exactly the same reason. When you are stuffing four toys at seven in the morning before a house full of dogs wakes up, a narrow opening costs you real minutes every single day.

The last of those classics left my house the same month the first Toppl arrived, a year ago, and the two were never used side by side after that. The difference is not dramatic. It is that I can pack this one with a spoon in a couple of seconds, and the dishwasher does the rest. Four times a day, that adds up to something.

I know plenty of people who swear by the classics and I am not going to argue with them. If you have a system that works and your dogs are happy, keep it. I changed because the filling and the scrubbing were wearing me down, not because the old toy failed. That is a smaller reason than it sounds. It is also the reason I actually use the Toppl every afternoon and I had quietly stopped using the other one.

Frozen hard, it takes my own dog about 25 minutes. That is 25 minutes I get to sit down, and in a house with three dogs in it, that is the whole pitch.

Who This Is For

This is for the person with a dog that eats too fast, or a dog that gets underfoot in the late afternoon, or a house with more than one dog in it and not enough hands. It is for anyone who has quietly stopped using a treat toy because cleaning it was a chore. The dishwasher part is not a small feature to me. It is the reason the toy is still in my cupboard a year later.

It is also for the person who wants to understand why a thing works before spending money on it. The reason this works is not complicated. It holds food in a tight enough space that getting it out takes time. Freezing stretches that time out further. No batteries, nothing to lose, nothing to figure out, nothing to train.

Who Should Skip It

If you have a large dog or a serious chewer, skip the Small and look at the larger sizes. I would not want you to order what I ordered and be disappointed by how fast it is over. If you are looking for something you can hand a dog and walk away from, this is not that either. Nothing in my house is that, and I have stopped pretending otherwise.

If your dog has no interest in food toys and only wants a ball, this will sit in a cupboard the way a dozen things sit in mine. And if you are not going to freeze anything overnight, it still works, it just works for a much shorter stretch. I would not buy it expecting a long, quiet afternoon without doing the freezing the night before.