We Gave Up on "Dog" Water Bottles

Instead of a long post about me falling way behind with this blog- let's just get back into the swing of things shall we?

If you have been reading for a while you would know we are outdoors people.  Not just casual, stroll at a big park people, but we camp, hike, backpack and generally spend a lot of our time in the wilderness.  Since most of that wilderness is in a desert water is a major consideration.  We have been through many different water packing methods for us and the dogs through our years out west and finally have settled on what works for us: the dogs just drink out of wide mouth Nalgene bottles.  On long hikes we will refill them out of the large water bladder we carry just like our own Nalgene.  For a long time we carried the Gulpy.  It is a fine piece of gear and for daily walks I do really like it.  The problem with the Gulpy is similar to every other method we have tried, that once you squeeze the water in the bowl portion it is there forever.  You have to squeeze out enough for the dog to lap up then you end up pouring out more water than your dog drank.  Let me tell you that on an overnight backpacking trip in the desert where you are lugging every ounce of water you have on your back the idea of pouring water out on the ground is extremely demoralizing.  The other issue with the  Gulpy is filling it with our water bladder.  Any dog water carrier out there has a lot of extra "stuff" on it as compared to a regular bottle and when you are looking to save weight on your back carrying several is not really an option.  This leaves you out in the woods trying to fill a tiny hole with water from a bladder meant to flow into large mouth nalgene bottles.  This is both not fun and a recipe to waste water.  Since our dogs are so small their faces can fit into a nalgene comfortably to drink it just started happening because it was the easiest thing to do in a pinch.  We even got Kerri a cute little nalgene that has a nice wide mouth but only holds a chihuahua sized amount of water.  Copley still needs the full size because his face is a little bigger, but he is going on less and less hikes in his older age so it is not a huge deal.

So now, after years of doing this or that we have settled on the dogs doing the exact same thing we do.  For the record I don't share water with the dogs, they do get their own nalgenes, but my husband I believe is not nearly as picky.  I try not to think about that- it is really gross.  I am curious what people with "full size" dogs do on backpacking trips.  A nalgene only would be comfortable for the little guys or maybe a hound with a long skinny muzzle as far as I can see.