Stainless steel dog travel water bottle with leaf bowl

Every walk with a thirsty dog runs into the same problem: there is water in the bag but nothing to pour it into. This travel bottle carries its own bowl. The silicone leaf that wraps the body flips up on a hinge to become a wide, shallow dish, and a button set into the cap sends water into it. Press once to pour, let the dog drink, then press again to draw the leftovers back inside before you fold the leaf down.

The bottle itself is 304 stainless steel with a brushed finish and a wide mouth, so it fills fast under a tap and rinses out without a bottle brush. The cap screws down onto a seal and the folded leaf sits over it as a cover, which is what lets the bottle travel on its side in a rucksack or a car door bin. A moulded silicone strap runs along the steel for carrying it in one hand while the lead is in the other. The manufacturer states that the double-wall construction holds temperature for up to twelve hours; that figure is theirs rather than ours.

Folded, it takes up about as much room as an ordinary sports flask, which matters more than it sounds when the bowl is usually the thing that gets left in the hall. There is nothing to clip together at the kerbside and nothing to balance on uneven ground: the leaf is stiff enough to hold its shape when a dog pushes into it, and it wipes out with a cloth afterwards.

It suits owners who are out for longer than half an hour – hill walks, beach afternoons, training classes, campsites and motorway services where the nearest tap is behind a locked door. The bowl is broad enough for a retriever to drink from without dipping its ears and shallow enough for a small terrier to reach, and cats and other pets take water from it just as readily on a journey to the vet.